City Lights: Allen Ginsberg

Jake: Although his poem is technically banned here in San Francisco, here is Allen Ginsberg performing a part of his controversial poem, Howl.

Noah: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,

Jake: Ginsberg is one of the most important voices in American poetry. A graduate of Columbia University, Ginsberg was born in 1926 to a mother with deteriorating mental health, an inspiration for him to begin writing. Ginsberg is a political activist with an obsession with the first amendment and a hatred of war. He got the ideas for the poem from Carl Soloman while receiving treatment for their mental illness.

Noah:who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,

Jake: Richard Eberhart said that It is a howl against everything in our mechanistic civilization that kills the spirit, and also, it lays bare the nerves of suffering and spiritual struggle. He is one of the critics that see it as an incredible expression of opinion, but many see it as blatantly obscene, causing an investigation. Noah:who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after nightwith dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls,

Jake: It has been said that Howl was an honest reflection of the mind of one with no life lines to the world around him. The entire poem is very long, with 112 long lines of free verse. He was tried on obscenity charges for writing this anti-establishment poem. He, as a beatnik, goes against conformity and common beliefs by upholding the concepts of drugs and homosexuality and anger towards the current social norms, and the treatment of the beatniks beliefs. Thank you, Mr. Ginsberg, for reading that.

Works Cited"American Poets of the 20th Century: The Poets: Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)." CliffNotes. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2015. ."Biography." Allen Ginsberg. Allen Ginsberg Project, n.d. Web. 24 Mar. 2015. .

Buchwald, Art. "'Beat' Poets Go Off-Beat Abroad." Washington Post 10 Aug. 1958: n. pag. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. Web. 24 Mar. 2015. .

Eberhart, Richard. "West Coast Rhythms." New York Times 2 Sept. 1956: n. pag. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. Web. 24 Mar. 2015. .Ginsberg, Allen. "Howl." 1955. Howl and Other Poems. By Ginsberg. N.p.: n.p., n.d. N. pag. Poetry Foundation. Web. 24 Mar. 2015. .Lask, Thomas. "An Angry Poet's Call to Arms." New York Times 29 Sept. 1957: n. pag. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. Web. 24 Mar. 2015. .Sampson, Paul. "Beat Generation Is a Gimmick Says Poet Rexroth." Washington Post 5 May 1958: n. pag. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. Web. 24 Mar. 2015. .