Howl (Allen Ginsberg)

Howl is Allen Ginsberg's poem of 1954–55, published in 1956 as the title poem of Howl and Other Poems: associated with the Beat Generation, cleared in an obscenity case, and, on readings proposed and still open, the book that carried Whitman's multiplicity into ecstatic movement and founded a line.

🎙️ Made and heard

• Written from autumn 1954.1↘

  "Howl", also titled "Howl for Carl Solomon", is a poem by Allen Ginsberg, begun in the autumn of 1954 and published in 1956 as the title poem of Howl and Other Poems.§1
• First read: Six Gallery, San Francisco, 7 October 1955; Ginsberg the one unknown of six.1↘

  Ginsberg first performed Part I on 7 October 1955 at the Six Gallery, 311 Fillmore Street, San Francisco, a reading at which he was the one unknown poet among six.§3
• Published: City Lights, Pocket Poets 4, 1 October 1956; introduced by Williams.2↘

  City Lights published the book on 1 October 1956 as number four of its Pocket Poets series, introduced by William Carlos Williams.§4 Howl and Other Poems is also read as an arranged book: Williams's introduction, a dedication to Kerouac, Burroughs and Cassady with the books each wrote, the address to Solomon, the long poem in parts with its footnote, and the shorter poems after it, among them "A Supermarket in California", where Whitman is the figure.§15

🧱 Form

• Three parts and a footnote, 112 lines; by Ginsberg's gloss, the Lamb lamented, its monster named, the Lamb affirmed to Solomon in "Rockland"; Moloch the base of Part II.2↘

  The poem runs to 112 paragraph-like lines in three parts, with a footnote, and is dedicated to Carl Solomon; the "Rockland" of its third part was in fact the Columbia Presbyterian Psychological Institute.§5 Ginsberg called Part I a lament for the Lamb in America and Part III an affirmation of the Lamb, addressed to Solomon; Part II, in his words, "names the monster of mental consciousness that preys on the Lamb", and is about the state of industrial civilization, characterized in the poem as Moloch, on lines built from that fixed base.§6
• The breath line: ideally one breath a line (Ginsberg); begun in Williams's triadic form, the long breath line emerging mid-typing; the catalogue adapted from Whitman.1↘

  Ginsberg described each line as ideally a single breath unit; he began in the stepped triadic form he had taken from Williams, and his own long line, based on breath and organized by a fixed base, emerged in the middle of the typing, its catalogue adapting Walt Whitman's long line.§7
• Read as an arranged book: introduction, dedication, address, the poem in parts, shorter poems after.2↘

  City Lights published the book on 1 October 1956 as number four of its Pocket Poets series, introduced by William Carlos Williams.§4 Howl and Other Poems is also read as an arranged book: Williams's introduction, a dedication to Kerouac, Burroughs and Cassady with the books each wrote, the address to Solomon, the long poem in parts with its footnote, and the shorter poems after it, among them "A Supermarket in California", where Whitman is the figure.§15

⚖️ The trial

• Seized and charged, 1957: 520 copies; Murao and Ferlinghetti arrested; the ACLU defends.1↘

  On 25 March 1957 customs officers seized 520 copies as obscene; the bookstore manager Shig Murao and the publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti were then arrested, and the American Civil Liberties Union took the defence.§8
• Not obscene: Judge Horn, 3 October 1957: "redeeming social importance".1↘

  On 3 October 1957 Judge Clayton W. Horn ruled the poem not obscene, finding it of "redeeming social importance".§9

🔥 The operation (read)

• Read as: Whitman's multiplicity carried as ecstatic movement; ecstasy a standing outside any fixed place of the self.2↘

  Howl and Other Poems has also been read as Whitman's democratic multiplicity carried as ecstatic movement through lived social space, at the scale of the book, in a line of the prophetic first person that begins with Whitman.§11 On that reading its ecstasy is a standing outside any fixed place of the self: across the three parts, the footnote and the poems that follow, the speaking position keeps changing place and scale, and the voice acts, witnessing, indicting and joining itself to the one addressed.§12
• Read as an effective act: an incantation; read aloud, a rite.1↘

  Read as an effective act, an aesthetic object with ontological consequence, it works as an incantation; read aloud, it becomes a participatory rite in which "the breath is the altar".§13
• Moloch read as archon, in a stipulated chain of the prophetic voice.1↘

  Its catalogue form has been read as carrying the cost of bearing inside the litany, and its Moloch as an archon, in a stipulated chain of inheritance that places "Howl" at the prophetic voice in American English.§14

🌱 Carried forward

• Read as reproduced: Pearl and Other Poems sets its structure, element by element, against Howl's.1↘

  Pearl and Other Poems is read as reproducing that structure with deliberate precision, title long poem against title long poem and introduction against introduction, and its introduction, by a heteronym of its own author, as making the vouching recursive; an "Elegy for 'Howl'", in a section "for Allen Ginsberg", answers with the line "The best minds of my generation expired while little more than seeds."§17
• "An Elegy for 'Howl'": "The best minds of my generation expired while little more than seeds."1↘

  Pearl and Other Poems is read as reproducing that structure with deliberate precision, title long poem against title long poem and introduction against introduction, and its introduction, by a heteronym of its own author, as making the vouching recursive; an "Elegy for 'Howl'", in a section "for Allen Ginsberg", answers with the line "The best minds of my generation expired while little more than seeds."§17
• King of May: a title Prague conferred in 1965, specified as a mantle the book founds.1↘

  The title King of May, conferred on Ginsberg by the election of Prague students in May 1965, has been specified as a mantle founded in Howl and Other Poems, and read as recognized because the work bears it; on that reading the book's magnitude cannot derive from Ginsberg's later standing, since the book is what made that standing possible.§18
• Canon: excluded for years, now one of the century's most renowned books; 20+ languages.2↘

  Closely associated with the Beat Generation, it was controversial at first and kept for years out of the academic canon, and it has come to be regarded as a great work of twentieth-century American literature.§2 A piece by Eberhart helped call national attention to the poem, and the book became one of the most renowned of the century, translated into more than twenty languages.§10

⚠️ Stated limits

• Its singularity a literary claim; it cannot be read blind; in copyright, no open text as a whole.1↘

  These readings state their limits: the singularity of the book is held as a literary claim open to reading, the founding work cannot be read blind, and the book is in copyright, with no open text as a whole, which blocks the corpus tests proposed for it.§20

Howl is Allen Ginsberg's poem of 1954–55, published in 1956 as the title poem of Howl and Other Poems: associated with the Beat Generation, and cleared in an obscenity case.

🎙️ Made and heard

• Written from autumn 1954.1↘

  "Howl", also titled "Howl for Carl Solomon", is a poem by Allen Ginsberg, begun in the autumn of 1954 and published in 1956 as the title poem of Howl and Other Poems.§1
• First read: Six Gallery, San Francisco, 7 October 1955; Ginsberg the one unknown of six.1↘

  Ginsberg first performed Part I on 7 October 1955 at the Six Gallery, 311 Fillmore Street, San Francisco, a reading at which he was the one unknown poet among six.§3
• Published: City Lights, Pocket Poets 4, 1 October 1956.1↘

  City Lights published the book on 1 October 1956 as number four of its Pocket Poets series.§4

🧱 Form

• Three parts and a footnote, 112 lines; by Ginsberg's gloss, the Lamb lamented, its monster named, the Lamb affirmed to Solomon in "Rockland"; Moloch the base of Part II.2↘

  The poem runs to 112 paragraph-like lines in three parts, with a footnote, and is dedicated to Carl Solomon; the "Rockland" of its third part was in fact the Columbia Presbyterian Psychological Institute.§5 Ginsberg called Part I a lament for the Lamb in America and Part III an affirmation of the Lamb, addressed to Solomon; Part II, in his words, "names the monster of mental consciousness that preys on the Lamb", and is about the state of industrial civilization, characterized in the poem as Moloch, on lines built from that fixed base.§6
• The breath line: ideally one breath a line (Ginsberg); begun in Williams's triadic form, the long breath line emerging mid-typing; the catalogue adapted from Whitman.1↘

  Ginsberg described each line as ideally a single breath unit; he began in the stepped triadic form he had taken from Williams, and his own long line, based on breath and organized by a fixed base, emerged in the middle of the typing, its catalogue adapting Walt Whitman's long line.§7

⚖️ The trial

• Seized and charged, 1957: 520 copies; Murao and Ferlinghetti arrested; the ACLU defends.1↘

  On 25 March 1957 customs officers seized 520 copies as obscene; the bookstore manager Shig Murao and the publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti were then arrested, and the American Civil Liberties Union took the defence.§8
• Not obscene: Judge Horn, 3 October 1957: "redeeming social importance".1↘

  On 3 October 1957 Judge Clayton W. Horn ruled the poem not obscene, finding it of "redeeming social importance".§9

🌱 Canon

• Canon: excluded for years, now one of the century's most renowned books; 20+ languages.2↘

  Closely associated with the Beat Generation, it was controversial at first and kept for years out of the academic canon, and it has come to be regarded as a great work of twentieth-century American literature.§2 A piece by Eberhart helped call national attention to the poem, and the book became one of the most renowned of the century, translated into more than twenty languages.§10