Howl and Other Poems

Amazon.com
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 taboos that copies were impounded as obscene, and the publisher, poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, was arrested. The court case that followed found for Ginsberg and his publisher, and the publicity made both the poet and the book famous. Ginsberg went on from this beginning to become a cultural icon of sixties radicalism. This works seminal place in the culture is indicated in Czeslaw Milosz's poetic tribute to Ginsberg: "Your blasphemous howl still resounds in a neon desert where the human tribe wanders, sentenced to unreality". --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Description

The prophetic poem that launched a generation when it was first published in 1965 is here presented in a commemorative fortieth Anniversary Edition.

When the book arrived from its British printers, it was seized almost immediately by U.S. Customs, and shortly thereafter the San Francisco police arrested its publisher and editor, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, together with City Lights Bookstore manager Shigeyoshi Murao. The two of them were charged with disseminating obscene literature, and the case went to trial in the municipal court of Judge Clayton Horn. A parade of distinguished literary and academic witnesses persuaded the judge that the title poem was indeed not obscene and that it had "redeeming social significance."

Thus was Howl & Other Poems freed to become the single most influential poetic work of the post-World War II era, with over 900,000 copies now in print." --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Howl and Other Poems

Howl and Other Poems,Allen Ginsberg,Fantasy,Beat Poetry,Poetry,Pop,Spoken,Spoken / Comedy / Radio Shows,Spoken Word

Average customer rating:

good book
Outcry!
Howl - Ginsberg's poetry read by the author on CD
A Weak Work
Howl, a preview to acclimate the prospective buyer

Howl and Other Poems
Allen Ginsberg
Manufacturer: Fantasy
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Poetry, Spoken Word & Interviews | Miscellaneous | Styles | Music

Poetry | Poetry, Spoken Word & Interviews | Miscellaneous | Styles | Music

Spoken Word | Poetry, Spoken Word & Interviews | Miscellaneous | Styles | Music

General | Miscellaneous | Styles | Music

General | Rock | Styles | Music
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A Coney Island of the Mind: Poems (New Directions Paperback No. 74)

ASIN: B000006054
Release Date: 1998-03-25

Tracks:

Howl
Footnote To Howl
A Supermarket In California
Transription Of Organ Music
America
In The Back Of The Real
Strange New Cottage In Berkeley
Europe! Europe!
Kaddish (Part 1)
The Sunflower Sutra

Amazon.com

Has a more notorious, infamous, call to arms of a poem than "Howl" been published in the late 20th century? Scrawled in 1955 with such intimate, enthusiastic fervor by the young Ginsberg, "Howl" helped thrust into the public eye the Beats--a genuinely original, deep, and at times unintentionally campy group of writers. But "Howl" is Ginsberg's work, and while it pays homage to his close friends--like William S. Burroughs ("who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit") and Jack Kerouac ("or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha")--it's no documentary of bohemian writerdom. Forget for a second that "Howl" is the famous poem it is--so frequently parodied, copied, and infamously litigated against--and just listen. This disc presents an intense, well-recorded reading from 1959 of this spiritual, touching work. The record also includes "Kaddish," "A Supermarket in California," and six other important works. --Mike McGonigal

Customer Reviews:

good book.......2007-02-18

If you love Whitman, you'll be a fan of this book. It's short, but the free verse is very similar.

Outcry!.......2007-02-04

>
As a teenager I wanted to run down the
middle of my hometown steet screaming and
throwing myself in the air, anything to break
up the dull drab everydayness of it, I don't
know if this is a common fantasy that teenagers
have?
>
A friend of mine said that Shakespeare
is hard to read but easier to understand when
seen performed on stage. I've read Howl (or
got 2/3 of the way through it) a couple of times
without really understanding it or enjoying it.
I've heard it recited on stage a couple of times
by Jean & John Waggoner's City Lights Review,
and even saw/heard Allen Ginsberg himself
perform it at Cheltenham Literary Festival circa
about 1992. And while appreciating the passion
of these live readings and recognising a few
references: "Neal Cassady cocksman..." etc.
I didn't really get it. I knew that two very
intelligent friends of mine got a big buzz out
of it, so knew I must be missing something.

So when I got Allen Ginsberg 'Howl &
Other Poems' CD and seeing that Howl was
the first track on it, I put it on my player, lay
on the bed, closed my eyes, settled down and
listened. Through Allen's distinctive matter-
of-fact voice the poem unfolded, revealing
itself to me. It was the same story as Jack
Kerouac's On the Road (correct me if I'm
wrong) containing nearly all the same
characters and a few others, yet told in
impressionistic verse, instead of Jack's long
prose poem. A take on the same era/scene/
emotion but from a different angle.

It's the paean of the underdog, concentrate:
wonderful imagery. Let Allen lead you around the
scene and show you that time, incident by pictured
incident. As he reads it see it on the inside of your
eyelids. You're back there with him. He describes
Neal Cassady and his love-making escapades
perfectly, sums up the life events of many 1940's
beatniks to be repeated by the same crashes and
compromises of 1960's hippies. Lives and dreams
crushed by the materialistic grey morning
commonsense it's-always been-this-way boulder
of inevitability, learning ways to grease their bodies
so they slide around the boulder and feel less its weight.

If you've read On the Road three times and
would like to take the trip again in a different seat in
the car, try Allen's. Although is it my impression
that Allen's view while exhilarating is a lot bleaker
than Jacks?

Howl - Ginsberg's poetry read by the author on CD.......2006-11-10

Haven't listened to it yet, but it arrived on time & I'm glad to have it for AP Lit English classes

A Weak Work.......2006-10-15

'Howl', like most -- perhaps all -- Beat poetry, has not aged well. It's a lazy, ugly poem which could have been written by any well-read and angry college kid. I have read it many times and see nothing in it of any value other than the historical.

Howl, a preview to acclimate the prospective buyer.......2006-09-13

Before starting, allow me to mention the fact that I am reviewing solely the poem "Howl" in Howl and Other Poems.

I read "Howl" this summer as a 16 year old and it changed my outlook on the world. As far as enjoying the poem I was entirely too confused by it the first time I read it to actually enjoy it; so let me start by giving the reader of this and prospective buyer of Howl and other Poems the advice to read "Howl" several times before forming a concrete opinion about it. There is really nothing in "Howl" that I dislike but there are many stanzas in which I cannot fully appreciate the writing because I do not understand all of it. The main strength of Ginsberg's poem is to expand the mind of the reader, even if that means confusing the reader. Take for example the stanza:
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue, amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
an absolutely mind boggling sentence, attacking the areas of fashion and advertising and the powers of editors in newspapers. Stanzas like that are why I enjoy this poem, it is a critique of the time that Ginsberg lived in and allows one to see parallels in the current day and age.