Howl

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, draggin themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dinamo in the machinery of night.”

Me pregunto ¿Quién no habrá leído las primeras líneas de “Aullido”? Un poema que influenció ampliamente la poesía norteamericana del siglo XXI, creado y disfrutado más recitado que leído , pero que sobre todas las cosas es tremendamente egoísta y socialmente masiva. Para Allen todo se trata de su círculo, de aquellos con los que convivió y cuáles fueron sus experiencias, se alejó de la rítmica y se enfocó en el sentimiento, y es por ello que terminó marcando una época por la sensación de desazón que desprenden sus versos, de que el mundo te ha traicionado, pero que al final te da esperanza.

Dividido en cuatro partes, las tres primeras son sucias, apasionadas y tristes, la última sección lo deja claro: no están solos. Sin importar si están en el psiquiátrico o en las abandonas calles de la ciudad, en la locura o en la drogadicción se tienen a ellos mismos y su libertad para ser, hablar y estar.

Para mi Aullido es un poema directo y maravilloso, que muestra a los marginados y a los olvidados como sólo otro individuo marginado podría haberlo hecho.

...

A supermarket in California

Quien hayan leído algo acerca de Ginsberg sabe de la gran influencia que tuvo Walt Whitman sobre él, y este poema puede ser tanto una oda a su persona como una visión de la sociedad común, de las situaciones del día a día, y dela transformación del mundo para bien o para mal.

…

America

Este es especial. Personalmente creo que junto con Aullido fue mi favorito. Es una conversación directa con América, donde Allen expone su sensación de traición, de desasosiego, de haber dado y no recibir nada a cambio. Conforme leía mi cabeza no deja de pensar en “Born in the USA” de Bruce Springsteen, ambas tienen ese mismo mensaje expresado desde la singularidad a la colectividad, sólo que aquí no hay música audible que nos haga omitir la letra, aquí todo es directo.

”America when will you be angelic?”

…

Otros poemas de la colección son Transcripción de música de organo,Sutra de girasol y En la consigna de Greyhound. Todos ellos son buenos pero carezco de notas respecto a ellos debido a que los leí mientras iba de pie en el metro a las 8 de la mañana, por tanto no puedo reseñarlos de manera correcta sin que se me mezclen los mensajes de cada uno.

Esta colección incluye además algunos primeros poemas los cuales difieren considerablemente respecto a los anteriores por su estructura: aquí se mantiene la rítmica clásica, la longitudes más corta y hay un mayor uso del sentido figurado, no obstante el sentimiento triste y perdido esinamovible.

Al final esta es una colección que merece ser leída (al menos por Howl y America), ya sea que te guste o no la poesía, porque el trabajo de Ginsberg es distinto de la poesía clásica, más cercano a una buena conversación que a un compilado de versos que disfrutar en tu soledad.

Ginsberg se formó en un contexto social profundamente caótico, azotado tanto por la promesa de la guerra como por la podredumbre que sigue a ésta, una época de marchas, de miseria, de ansia de cambio, de terror al mismo también, una época de humanidad pisoteada y humanidad a gritos para hacerse sentir. Todo esto es evidente, tangible incluso, en su obra.

Aullido es por sobre todas las cosas, incluso antes que un poema, una crítica a la sociedad norteamericana. Escapando de las estructuras o rimas que algunos seguramente intentaron exigirle, Ginsberg se decanta más por la sustancia en la forma de una realidad implacable. El poeta da testimonio de un periodo de pobreza, depresión, soledad, consumo de drogas, decepciones y muchos otros oscuros componentes de la existencia de una forma inequívocamente viva y crítica.

I feel like it's this unspoken rule that you're allowed to admire the folks of the Beat generation in your teens, but are meant to outgrow them and their idealistic and hedonistic views in your adulthood. For me personally, the times in which I'd call Jack Kerouac and his friends an inspiration to how I want to approach life long past gone, but I remain charmed and occasionally intoxicated with the sense of urgency, the passion and the raw vibrancy that their work encapsulates.



So for those unfamiliar with Allen Ginsberg – the 2oth-century American poet and writer embodied a lot of what was known as counterculture: he opposed militarism and materialism, came to terms with his own sexuality and had open views towards drugs, sex and Eastern religions. Howl is the title of his 1955 poem, which consists of three parts, with an additional footnote and is basically allowing us a look on the US he perceived, with its people, its threats and political tendencies.



It's an ode to the counterculture. The first part particularly introduces us to people that make up America. But it's the underdogs we zoom in on, the artists and political radicals, the drug addicts and the psychiatric patients. It's a graphic description, both in terms of violence and sexuality, but Ginsberg delivers his lines with such a force and power that this feels empowering and freeing. To him, those underdogs are the true geniuses of the country, those that are better than the conformity they're condemned to by a materialistic and bureaucratically society. That sort of idealism can rightfully be criticised, but I personally couldn't help but to feel emotionally carried away by that wave of passion Ginsberg lets loose.



This also becomes a deep-dive into the social circles that Ginsberg moves in. There are tons of specific references to his friends (e.g. Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and William S. Burroughs) and to art that was relevant during the 50s as well as mysticism that Ginsberg was into at the time. I'm pretty sure I wasn't even able to catch all the layers hidden under those words feelings so raw and unfiltered, while essentially full of wit, surprise and even humour. I completely get people who say this poem lacks style or beauty in a traditional sense. Ginsberg might not be big on lyrical metaphors and stylistic devices and usually I'm a sucker for these things. But if something can ultimately make me feel something instead of making me impressed on an academic level, I'll take it any day.

The other poems were a mixed bag for me. It's basically the reason I'm rating this four stars instead of five – after Howl come a few other plays with words, some of which felt like Ginsberg was just on some drug trip and decided to make notes of what he was seeing. Not bad, but not great either.

I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.


That's strange, when I consider Whitman, I just want to buy blue jeans and drive a posh car and send photos of my smoothie and inform everyone of my prowess at axe-throwing. Fucking Ginsburg.


Madness and penises is certainly a nice chorus but when it is the entire libretto?


I did like some of the other poems included as well as the introduction by William Carlos Williams, but it is certainly a 2.2 for me rounded up.

TBR jar pick for January 2016

It's easy to underestimate the Beats now, in this era (of which the better parts, one might argue, they helped bring about). It's easy to dismiss it all as "attempting to shock" and "deliberately aggressive/anarchist/lewd/[whichever other titles have been slapped on this collection over the years]". They're Holden Caulfield, they're Jim Stark, they're Don Quixote tilting at windmills.

But the truth is that the Beats, that Allen Ginsberg, that Howl, was revolutionary at a time when poetry could spark a revolution - and at a time when such sparks were as much dangerous as they were subversive. The truth is that Ginsberg's audacity was not only ahead of his time then, but is also ahead of its time now.

And there's something incredibly disheartening about that. But where the cultural value of this collection is concerned, it is also incredibly real.

Because while some notions Ginsberg seems to deem the wildest of dreams have become a reality we are accustomed to today, others are ones we have yet to achieve. And ones we have become frightened to express. And this poetry, at its core, has not only retained its value, but also its very real implications. Despite an occasional cue taken from Baudelaire, Ginsberg's poetry was not l'art pour l'artisme. It was an art for the sake of change. Or - rather - art with the hope of change. It was art meant to provoke, meant to halt, meant to reflect the society until eventually the society reflected it the art in return.

And we aren't there quite yet.

And part of it - the part that laments an individual getting lost in a (harsh and unyielding) system - is the part which might well retain its relevance forever.

Allen Ginsberg, a sad and lonely man, wrote this to impress Kerouac, another sad and lonely man.

Over the years, a lot of sad and lonely people haven't gotten over the how much that first fucking line resonates with them.

The whole best minds/generation/destroyed/madness line.

Ten years ago, this was a 5-star poem. Ten years from now, it will be a 3-star poem.

That's just called growing up, folks.

Ginsberg's oeuvre has been uneven, but Howl is his best, and most famous poem, a stunning, powerful and radical piece of work buoyed by an electric undercurrent of energy and anger, and hallucinatory imagery. It is unlike anything previously written, taking off with its famous opening line : "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness..." - and continuing at a breath-taking pace. It is the story of Ginsberg and his friends - Kerouac, Cassady, Burroughs, Huncke, et al - but also a diatribe against the evils of capitalist America. Ironically, the 1950s in America is widely considered to be a dull and placid time, but in fact the era was brimming with radical change, giving us teenagers, rock'n'roll, classic films like On the Waterfront, Some Like it Hot, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and others, icons like Elvis, Brando, Dean, and Monroe, plus the Beats, who morphed into the Hippies and the whole counter culture of the 1960s, out of which sprang virtually all the protest and social movements of today, from Occupy to the environmentalists. When I was a teenager in New York in the 60s, I happened upon Ginsberg one afternoon near Washington Square Park and read him one of my poems. In truth it wasn't a very good poem, but Ginsberg was kind enough to listen to it and give me a rapid-fire poetry lesson on the spot as I struggled to keep pace with him, urging me to be more descriptive: "Describe everything you see - the people, the pavement, the grass, the colour of the sky," etc., he told me as we weaved briskly through the Village streets. (An incident, btw, I recount in my graphic novel Giraffes in my Hair: A Rock'n'Roll Life, drawn by my partner Carol Swain).
A lovely man, and an often great poet.

The United States Supreme Court has said that obscenity is construed to mean: having a substantial tendency to corrupt or arousing lustful desires. Is the word relevant to what the author of Howl is trying to say? Or did he just use it to be dirty and filthy. He sees what he terms as

"an adonis of Denver. Joy to the memory of his innumerable conquests. Who went whoring through Colorado in myriad, stolen night cars. Neil Cassidy, secret hero of this poem, cocksman and adonis of Denver. Joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls. In empty lots, in diner backyards, movie houses, rickety rows, on mountain tops, in caves, or with gullet waitresses in familiar wayside, lonely petticoat upliftings. And especially secret gas station solipsisms of Jon's and hometown alleys too."

Now I suppose he could have said that the secret hero of this poem, this cocksman, this adonis of Denver, joy to the memory of his innumerable conquests was at the Waldorf Historia, or at the Diner at Chasa's, or after one or two drinks was going to bed at the Stork Club. I presume he could have said that. But that isn't the kind of person he is writing about. It is not for us to choose the words. Mr. Ginsberg, in telling his story, is telling the story as he sees it. He is using his words. There are books that have the power to change men's minds and call attention to situations that are visible but unseen. Whether Howl is or is not obscene is of little importance to our world, faced as it is with the threat of physical survival. But the problem with what is legally permissible in the description of sexual acts or feelings in arts and literature is of the greatest importance to a free society. What is prurient? To whom? The material so described is dangerous to some unspecified, susceptible reader. It is interesting that the person applying such standards of censorship rarely feels as if their own physical or moral health is in jeopardy. The desire to censor is not limited, however, to crackpots or bigots. There is in most of us a desire to make the world conform to our own beliefs. And it takes all of the force of our own reason as well as our legal institutions to defy so human an urge. The battle of censorship will not be finally settled by your honors decision; you will either add to liberal educated thinking or by your decision you will add fuel to the fire of ignorance. Let there be light. Let there be honesty. Let there be no running from nonexistent destroyers of morals. Let there be honesty. Understanding.

Today, I reread this book to teach it in my English 343 class. During lunch, I chatted up a first-year student about the book--she'd not read it nor heard of it, but emerged, out of my brief description, ready to cross the path to the bookstore and pick up her copy to read in her (all too brief) leisure time. On the way back to the office, I passed one of my students in the class, and asked him, "Excited about Howl tomorrow?" No, he told me. I don't really like the Beats. I kinda got over them in High School. He is, he informed me, much more interested in the New York School and O'Hara.

Fair enough. We'll get to O'Hara on Friday.

But I feel sad that this book of poems is something that nowadays my very bright students who've read a bunch of poetry feel like they can get over, or though which they may pass, like adolescence, when one regrettably suffers the angst that comes from insuperable acne. Reading this book of poems in a class feels a bit like being in the temple of Moloch, reading subversive, heretical literature, when no one will especially care. Cue famous photo of the Virginia Military Institute: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/200....

I feel like the literary historical moment of these poems isn't enough to fuel the teaching of them.

What would it mean to read this poem after the War on Drugs? After the Wire? After Breaking Bad? Hell, after Modern Family? After the sorts of literary and social rebellion which these poems champion and in some cases make possible have become subjects to study in school, do we simply cast a nostalgic or literary historical eye on the text?

What they WERE will never be enough.

I feel waves of a prickly emotion when I read Ginsberg’s poems. This was my first time reading this collection – each and every single one of the poems made its presence known to me. It’s not quite sadness, not quite anger, not quite fear. Certainly it isn’t anything close to elation and joy. But it is something. And that’s why I read poetry, to feel something.

Favourites in this collection were:
• Howl
• Sunflower Sutra
• America
• Song

Vibrante e impulsionante. Que mais dizer? Possivelmente muito.

A edição bilingue da Relógio D'Água motivou-me a ler Uivo e Outros Poemas; nunca antes tinha lido um livro de poesia não lusófona. No fim tem ainda uma secção de notas que elucida sobre factos biográficos, históricos, geográficos, etc, importantes para a compreensão da obra.

لعنتی تموم بشو نبود....
هی میخوندم هی نمیفهمیدم هی میرفتم از اول جمله رو میخوندم...بار ها این داستان تکرار شد ...دستام داره میلرزه....آلن گینزبرگ یا همون بنظر من پدر معنوی شعر پست مدرن... فوق العاده بود...اما چند مدت دیگه ازش نمیخونم بشدت تحت تاثیر قرار میده فقط کافیه یه شعرش رو بخونید...
قضیه جالب برام این بود که چطور این شعرا رو مینوشت،آلن واقعا تن به یه رودخونه گنگ زده بود،تن به مصرف موادی زده بود که کسی اسمشو نمیدونست،آلن یه تنه جلوی ارتش نازی ایستاده بود،من این رو حس کردم...
آلن با اولین جمله کتاب باعث شد این کتاب رو سه روزه تموم کنم جمله اول( جنون بهترین ذهن های نسلم رو ویران کرد)

این جمله کافی بود تا توی دلم بگم خدای من قراره چه چیزی بخونم،شعرای آلن واقعا سختن،در طول کتاب هی داشتم از چند کتاب کمک میگرفتم،اما اینقدر بهتون بگم که یه جمله از کتاب برای جنون کافیه

آلن گینزبرگ رو کنار بوکوفسکی در قلبم نوشتم هرچند کفه سنگین ترازو دست آلن هست