The "Beat Movement" in modern literature has become an important
period in the history of literature and society in America. Incorporating
influences such as jazz, art, literature, philosophy, and religion, the Beat
writers created a new and prophetic vision of modern life and changed the way
an entire generation of people see the world. That generation is now aging and
its representative voices are becoming lost to eternity, but the message is
alive and well. The Beats have forever altered the nature of American
consciousness.
The impact of the Beats would certainly not have been as universal or
influential if not for the writing of one poem; "Howl" by Allen
Ginsberg:
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving
hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient
heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.(1-3)
These lines, perhaps the most well known in 20th century poetry, serve as a
thematic statement for a poem that offers a new way of thinking, a sense of
hope of escape from the "Molochs" of society. The story of the poem's
history serves well as an account of the birth of the Beat Generation.
Ginsberg's life leading up to the writing of "Howl," the actual
creation of the poem, its legendary first reading, and the aftermath of its
public debut all figure prominently into the history of the literary movement.
One can understand the impact of the poem on the Beat Generation by studying
not only the chronology of its past, but its intricate and unique structure as
well as its themes and ultimate message. Following is an examination of the
poem as the great expression of Beat defiance, beginning with a short history
of the poem.
Ginsberg's Beat career began at Columbia University in 1943 where he met
Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassidy and others. This group of
writers would remain life-long friends of Ginsberg and influence him in myriad
ways. The history of "Howl," however, begins in 1953 after Ginsberg's
move to San Francisco in search of poetic inspiration. Having moved away from
the camaraderie of his group of New York friends, Ginsberg began to feel
dislocated and depressed. Ginsberg knew he was at a crossroads in his art
between his apprenticeship to academic models of literature (mentor William
Carlos Williams specifically), and breaking through to a personal voice which
could sing of experience beyond the bounds of what was permissible - by 50's
academic standards - to speak of in poetry.
Battling writer's block, Ginsberg decided to enroll in graduate school at
U.C. Berkeley, moved to North Beach, and moved in with a friend of Kerouac's.
It was in these surroundings that he came to be part of poet Kenneth Rexroth's
Friday night poetry circle. The Rexroth circle: well-read and international,
homosexual and heterosexual, poets and artists from several generations, laid
the foundation for the Beat breakthrough.
Ginsberg slowly became more comfortable with his new surroundings,
encouraged by his new companion, Peter Orlovsky. He still, however, was
becoming more and more depressed, attempting to deal with his repressed
homosexuality. Ginsberg consulted a psychiatrist and asked him if he should be
trying to be heterosexual. When the doctor asked Ginsberg what he really
wanted to do, the poet replied, "I really would just love to get an
apartment, stop working and live with Peter and write poems." To which
the doctor replied, "why don't you?" (Schumacher 147).
Ginsberg felt he had received a blessing. He arranged his own layoff at the
market-research firm where he had been working by replacing himself with a
computer, ensuring himself unemployment benefits for six months. He and
Orlovsky moved into an apartment together and Ginsberg began writing. In July
of 1955, Ginsberg wrote a line in his journal, "I saw the best mind
angel-headed hipster damned," thinking of his friend Carl Solomon. A week
or so later, Ginsberg sat down in his apartment to release some poetic energy
into his typewriter.
I sat idly at my desk by the first floor window facing Montgomery street's
slope to gay Broadway - only a few blocks from City Lights literary
paperback bookshop. I had a secondhand typewriter, some cheap scratch paper. I
began typing, not with the idea of writing a formal poem, but stating my
imaginative sympathies, whatever they were worth. As my loves were impractical
and my thoughts relatively unworldly, I had nothing to gain, only the pleasure
of enjoying on paper those sympathies most intimate to myself and most awkward
in the great world of family, formal education, business and current
literature (Art 44).
Ginsberg expanded on the line from his journal, changing it to a second
draft of the bast-known line in 20th Century poetry: "I saw the best
minds of my generation / generation destroyed by madness / starving mystical
naked." Ginsberg continued for seven single-spaced pages. The lines were
short, influenced by Williams, and the phrases showed inspiration of soaring
jazz saxophone riffs. "I knew Kerouac would hear the sound,"
Ginsberg later said (Parkinson 114). The author revised his poem, combining
the short lines into long, "breath-lines." Although he felt the poem
was too personal to publish, Ginsberg sent a copy to Kerouac. Kerouac's
reply was so encouraging that Ginsberg immediately began scouting for a venue
in which to read his poem. Finally, in the fall of 1955, a reading by six
poets, including Ginsberg, was arranged at the Six Gallery.
The Six Gallery reading has since become a literary legend. Several
well-known authors were in attendance, including Kerouac, who beat a wine jug
and shouted "GO!" after each line of Ginsberg's poem. The
emotional first reading of the poem left Ginsberg and others in tears. The
legendary reading led to the publishing of the collection and, subsequently, a
charge of obscenity against its publisher, City Lights books. The
sensationalism surrounding the months of litigation that followed stifled the
poem's literary reception, but at the same time made Howl and Other Poems
easily one of the best-selling volumes of poetry of the 20th century. These
are the events that shaped the poem and elevated it to a level that few
literary works have ever achieved. It became the voice of a generation that
was emerging from subcultural San Francisco into the minds of America at
large.
Obviously, however, a literary work does not become a modern classic by way
of publicity alone. What is it, then, that propels "Howl" past the
bounds of ordinary poetry and into the realm of landmark literature? What is
it that has caused this poem to become the handbook of an entire generation?
This question is best explored beginning with Ginsberg's own views of his
work. Ginsberg considered the writing of "Howl" to be a new phase in
his poetic development, best characterized by total creative freedom. This
freedom consists mainly of an escape from "fear" to total openness
and honesty. "I thought I wouldn't write a poem," he explains,
"but just write what I wanted to without fear, let my imagination go,
open secrecy, and scribble magic lines from my real mind - sum up my life
- something I wouldn't be able to show anybody, write for my own soul's
ear and a few other golden ears" (Notes). A second aspect of the total
creative freedom of the poem is metrical. Ginsberg claims he began the poem
with no structure in mind. He worked with his own "neural impulses and
writing impulses" to arrive at a pattern "organically, rather than
synthetically" (Art 44). The poem, he states, was, "typed out madly
in one afternoon, a tragic custard-pie comedy of wild phrasing [and]
meaningless images" (Notes). In order to read "Howl" properly,
one must avoid the impulse to search for a logical or rational connection of
ideas. Analysis or explanation of the poem would seem to be n competition with
the poem's own message, which is literally a violent howl of human anguish
and other spontaneous feelings.
The two aspects which perhaps contribute most to the poem's literary
power are "tightness" and spontaneity. The first of these two has to
do with what Ginsberg called "density" - the richness of imagery
packed into a given line. The poem achieves this with the help of an escape
from grammatical continuity. The rules of grammar are abandoned in order to
place images densely in carefully chosen proximity to other images. The result
is the appearance of such strong images as "negro streets,"
"angry fix," "paint hotels," "blind streets,"
and "hydrogen jukebox." The poem communicated somewhat ambiguously,
through images. Because of this, grammatical logic is of little concern. The
entire 78 line first section of the poem is, in fact, one sentence.
The other aspect of the poem which brings the language to life is its
spontaneity. Ginsberg has discovered a way to sustain a long line of poetry
without allowing it to lapse into prose. He leaps from one image or perception
to another with speed. This spontaneity gives the poem a feeling of
uncontrived honesty.
These technical aspects of the poem contribute to its power in very
important way. "Howl"'s spontaneity and collection of juxtaposed
images give the poem a "voice" that may be both defiant and
celebratory in the same line. This is the voice of the Beat Generation, at
once reacting against the increasingly commercial and conformist Eisenhower
years and celebrating the rise of a new counterculture.
The power of "Howl" goes far beyond what is achieved through
technical methods. The themes in the poem are most important in representing
the message of the Beat Generation. In the first part of the poem, the author
sets himself as an observer in a mad world. He is witness to the destruction
of "the best minds of my generation" by madness (9). This theme of
madness in the first section of the poem is used to describe the workings of
these minds. They are "burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the
starry dynamo in the machinery of the night," and they have "bared
their brains to Heaven" (9). Later comes a reference to Ginsberg's own
commitment to an asylum (15) as well as the application of this theme to a
specific individual, Carl Solomon, who is undergoing treatment at Rockland
State Hospital (16). These minds are martyrs in the sense that they have
chosen to embrace madness as an alternative to the unbearable sanity of the
real world. Their madness consists of their refusal to accept a non-spiritual
view of the world, in their "burning for the ancient heavenly
connection" in a civilization that has pronounced God dead.
Part two of "Howl", written under the influence of peyote, is an
accusation: "What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open the skulls
and ate up their brains and imagination?" (17). Here, the antagonist is
named as "Moloch," who becomes the symbol for social illness. It is
perhaps most constructive to read this part simply as an indictment of those
elements in modern society that lead to the "Mad generation" being
hurled "down upon the rocks of Time" (18). Part three begins on a
note of compassion and identification, directed at Carl Solomon.. "Carl
Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland where you're madder than I am" (19).
"I'm with you in Rockland" becomes a repeated phrase that causes the
section to read as a sympathy card from Ginsberg to Solomon. Solomon comes to
represent what the author considers to be a general condition.
The last section, "Footnote to Howl," actually a separate poem,
offers a cure for the social illness represented by Moloch in part two.
Ginsberg has consciously designed these two sections to be roughly parallel to
each other. The name "Moloch" is replaced with the word
"holy". Consider the following two passages from part two and
"footnote", respectively:
Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers
stand in the long streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories dream
and croak in the fog! Moloch whose smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!
(17)
Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy the cafeterias filled
with millions! Holy the mysterious rivers of tears under the streets! (21)
Identical raw materials are presented in both cases (skyscrapers,
pavement), but the substitution of the words provides two very different
perspectives; one of ugliness and one of the understanding of the holiness in
everything.
Very few themes overlap the three sections and footnote to
"Howl". Two that provide a thematic groundwork for the poem are time
and religion. Time is presented as the main difference between the two
struggling realms of existence in the poem. The "hipsters" time is
eternal, not the chronological time of real-world existence. During their
journey toward timelessness, the "hipsters", "threw their
watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, &
alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade" (13). In
pursuing "timelessness" the "hipsters" are punished by
"Time". On the other hand, there is the destructive time which
destroys the "mad generation". Time, therefore, becomes a symbol of
two separate realms of existence: the "square" reads time by a clock
while the "hipster" reads the holy "clocks in space" which
tell him that time does not matter -- that truth is timeless.
The second theme present in the poem is religion. The poem reads at times
like scripture, with words like "blessed" used repeatedly. Other
times, the religion of the poem is internal. Kenneth Rexroth states that the
writing is "prophetic". "There are prophets of the Bible,"
he says, "which it greatly resembles in purpose and in language and in
subject matter . . . The theme is the denunciation of evil and a pointing out
of the way out, so to speak" (Rexroth 68). Another underlying religious
theme is that of persecution, such as that of those "who lit cigarettes
in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in the
grandfather night" (11), and those "who were burned alive in their
innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse . . . or
were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality" (14). These
themes of time and religion give the poem an eternal and prophetic quality
that has remained unrivaled in modern poetry.
This examination of "Howl"'s history, structure, and themes
brings to light the poem's ultimate importance to the history of American
literature and society. The Beat Generation of writers offered the world a new
attitude. They brought to society a consciousness of a life worth living. They
offered a method of escape from the stultifying, unimaginative world we live
in through the exploration of one's intellect. Allen Ginsberg's
"Howl" does all of these things and more in an unforgettable,
inspirational way. The poem points the way toward a new and better existence,
chronicling the pilgrimage of the "mad generation" toward a reality
that is timeless and placeless, holy and eternal.
