Allen Ginsberg

The epigraph for Howl is from Walt Whitman: "Unscrew the locks from the doors!/Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!" Announcing his intentions with this ringing motto, Allen Ginsberg published a volume of poetry which broke so many social...

Pocket Poets Number 4

Howl and Other Poems

Nica

The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction

Who can deny? In dreams it touches the body, in thought constructs a miracle, in imagination anguishes till born inhuman- looks out of the heart burning with purity - for the burden of life is love, but we carry the weight wearily,

and so must rest in the arms of love at last, must rest in the arms of love. No rest without love, no sleep without dreams of love- be mad or chill obsessed with angels or machines, the final wish is love -cannot be bitter, cannot deny, cannot withhold if denied: the weight is too heavy - must give for no return as thought is given in solitude in all the excellence of its excess.

We’re not our skin of grime, we’re not our dread bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we’re all beautiful golden sunflowers inside, we’re blessed by our own seed & golden hairy naked accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sitdown vision.

How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your grime, while you cursed the heavens of the railroad and your flower soul?

Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive? the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?

You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower! And you locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me not!

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination ?

Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!

who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotents Aeterna Deus

to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head.

Ceej Manaloto

3.5

Reading this feels like hanging out with Kerouac and the rest of the gang yelling curse words, effin up tradition/capitalism/.whatever-the-gang-decides-is-a-form-of-pretentious-modesty, and being involved in all sorts of obscenities... beautifully.

Don't ask me. I also don't know how, but I liked it.

neli

This is definitely one of my favourite books/poems, and I wish I could post all my annotations on here, though it are tooo many to write down. Howl is very fascinating by itself

Katherine Yang

Frédéric Bourgeon

A massive landmark both in poetry and in literature history. Not easily accessible to second-language English speakers, but worth the effort. I don't think it is possible not to include these poems in a selection of "Beat" literature.

nini!

3.75 stars. 

allen ginsberg u could still be anticapitalist and make your sentences a semi-normal length <3

Emma-Luna Riegsinger

I think I didn’t “get” the majority of these poems. I’m not American, so the American culture referenced so excessively in them doesn’t strike the same chord for me as I guess it would for “USA people”. Other than that, I am 17 years old. I didn’t even experience the reunification of Germany (which is where I live) firsthand, it’s just part of the things I study in history class and I can only imagine what it must have felt like by asking people who were alive at that time and so on. Same thing with the Cold War which Ginsberg mentions several times, especially in his letter to America. So overall, I’m too young and too German and I didn’t get even half of the “references”, names of people and cities and brands and objects mentioned. Also, the poems, especially “Howl” itself, are often formed like “random” (I know, not random at all) blurts of words, like a stream of consciousness featuring so many things and people I don’t know and thus can’t relate to. Nevertheless, some of the poems were meaningful to me, maybe in another way than they were intended, but still. My favourites were “Footnote to Howl”, “Transcription of Organ Music”, “America” and “Song”. I love how many times words like “c*ck” are used in the book in relation to the time it was written in. It made me smirk a lot. And thank you so much, Allen, for declaring basically everything and everyone holy. The poem “Footnote to Howl” has been hanging above my bed for about 1.5 years now.

Vittoria Vespoli 

WTF was this
Well I liked the song 
But Um
Wtf

mayra

Howl
footnote to howl (!!!!!!!!!)
a supermarket in California
America
song
wild orphan

Donald

It's weird that I'd never read this before. Ginsberg is not a great poet, but this is an interesting document re: gay life in the 1950s. It's interesting to read it alongside Hart Crane and Whitman.

This collection of poems by Ginsberg created a sensation when it was first published in 1956, becoming the subject of an obscenity trial and changing the literary landscape forever.

Howl, and Other Poems

Mayra Melo

"The weight of the world
is love.
Under the burden
of solitude,
under the burden
of dissatisfaction

the weight,
the weight we carry
is love."

Christine Joelle Valisno Manaloto

Olivera Mitić

Od svih pesama u zbirci, najviše mi se dopala Amerika. Ove ostale mogu i da se preskoče, mada Howl koliko toliko spada u opštu kulturu.

Lisa Miller

In terms of style I definitely got Walt Whitman vibes which I liked. In terms of content it was completely alienating. I feel like the wikipedia article about the poem and author is more worthwhile and interesting reading than the poem itself but I generally feel that way about The Beat crowd.

Hala Abdulaziz 

Disturbing and raw, you can almost taste the insanity so close by.

orlando calva

Mi parte favorita:

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing. America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956. I can't stand my own mind. America when will we end the human war? Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb. I don't feel good don't bother me. I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind. America when will you be angelic? When will you take off your clothes?

America (fragmento)

Pixie J Stoner

This book was reading hard to rate. There were poems I loved and there were times I think even Allen Ginsberg was tired of his own shit, I never want to hear the words “holy cock” come from a man again

Considered the single most influential work of post-WWII United States poetry. A strident critique of middle-class complacency, consumerism, and capitalist militarism, HOWL also celebrates the pleasures and freedoms of the physical world. In addition to "Howl," poems in the book include: "A Supermarket in California," "Sunflower Sutra," "America," "In the Baggage Room at Greyhound," "Transcription of Organ Music," and "Wild Orphan," among others.

This book was really hard to rate. There were poems I loved and there were times I think even Allen Ginsberg was tired of himself. I never want to hear the words “holy cock” come from a man again.

Howl and Other Poems Pocket Poets Number 4

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