“Howl” 50 Years Later

“Howl” 50 Years Later

Posted on 01. Oct, 2005 by Courtney in Miscellany

“Fifty years ago, poet Allen Ginsberg gave the first public reading of “Howl” at a gathering in San Francisco. It was a literary milestone: Many consider that night the birth of the Beat Generation,” reports NPR’s Robert Seigel.

Listen to interview with Gary Snyder, who recalls the event.

It’s hard to explain my initial excitement after first reading “Howl” about 10 or so years ago. After studying the classics and formal literature for so many years, the liberation of the verse that Ginsberg and the other Beats employed, resounded in my teenage heart. Ecstatic, non-linear, and concentrated with raw emotion, how could any young person resist? Suddenly, I felt free to reflect the rhythm of my thought process, without care for syntax or punctuation. There was no barrier between mind and pen.

Thinking of the Beats brings me right back to the days in high school, with creaking and scratched hardwood floors, depressions worn into the stairs after decades of use, and the sagging ceiling over our smaller than regulation-sized basketball court/gymnasium. The school was founded in 1829, with a typical graduating class of 14 to 20 students… a very small school. There was a tradition that upon graduation, each student would be awarded with a book that he or she had chosen based on criteria that I have long since forgotten. I hated high school, and harbored dreams to drop out and become a carpenter or migrant farm worker. The book that the principal presented to me still graces a bookshelf at home: Naked Angels: The Lives & Literature of the Beat Generation. After hearing the a fore mentioned radio story, I immediately pulled it off the shelf to revisit old friends.

Now, many others have written about the significance of “Howl,” in terms of free speech and expression. There are even celebrations of “Howl” happening around the country for the next several months. Although interesting, my heart isn’t necessarily in the recapping of history, so I’ll leave it to the folks at City Lights.

The issue of censorship was framed in a new light for me. Yesterday I was at an impromptu artists’ talk (delivered by seniors in a BFA program) and a student commented that we are in a “Neo-Hellenistic” era, with sexuality used for pleasure and advertisement eye candy, much to the delight of many. Did Ginsberg and the other Beat poets, jazz musicians and activists open up our world and our thinking to the extent of that during post-Alexanderian Rome? Are we repeating history, causing us to be in danger of heading into the conservative Dark Ages again under the rule of G.W. Bush?

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