Did Howl change the landscape of English poetry forever?

[bronzeage]

The entire text can be found here: Howl, by Allen Ginsberg.

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,

Next to "How do I love thee, let me count the ways," this is probably the best opening line ever written for a poem. This is beat style, where form means nothing, the rhythm, the words, the tone, the beat is everything. This piece is the foundation of a thousand parodies and millions of very bad poems, which in the world of poetry, is true success.

 

[bogusagain]

Ginsberg was very eratic and published lots of rubbish but like it or loathe it, he broke the back of the net with Howl, it's iconic now so its always going to be talked about and read.

I was a big beat fan when I was young, now I just respect them for what they achieved. I have read Howl quite a few times over the years and watched the movie, which I liked. Ginsberg, however, in interview, I find irritating.

BTW I reread On The Road again because of the recent movie but didn't think much of it compared to how I raved about it when I was young. Maybe some times you just have to read literature and poetry at the right age.

 

[bronzeage]

Ginsberg was very eratic and published lots of rubbish but like it or loathe it, he broke the back of the net with Howl, it's iconic now so its always going to be talked about and read.

I was a big beat fan when I was young, now I just respect them for what they achieved. I have read Howl quite a few times over the years and watched the movie, which I liked. Ginsberg, however, in interview, I find irritating.

BTW I reread On The Road again because of the recent movie but didn't think much of it compared to how I raved about it when I was young. Maybe some times you just have to read literature and poetry at the right age.

In life and poetry, timing is everything.

 

[bronzeage]

Ginsberg was very eratic and published lots of rubbish but like it or loathe it, he broke the back of the net with Howl, it's iconic now so its always going to be talked about and read.

I was a big beat fan when I was young, now I just respect them for what they achieved. I have read Howl quite a few times over the years and watched the movie, which I liked. Ginsberg, however, in interview, I find irritating.

BTW I reread On The Road again because of the recent movie but didn't think much of it compared to how I raved about it when I was young. Maybe some times you just have to read literature and poetry at the right age.

In life and poetry, timing is everything.

 

[bogusagain]

Before this thread is prematurely abandoned, was anyone else into the beats?

Personally I think their influence ended up being greater than their poetry but there are diamonds in the rough.

I remember coming across Michael McClure's Antechamber in a secondhand bookshop and being knocked off my feet by it. It is a wonderful poem about, inspired by, the Man-o'war jellyfish. How he got such a wonderful poem out of the subject, still fascinates me.

 

[Angeline]

Bogus, as I mentioned in my interview I was given a copy of Howl and also had the opportunity to see Ginsberg read a bunch of times and Burroughs once--and saw many lesser-known poets from that period at readings. That was in the late 1970s, which was past their prime but some were still around and active. I think their influence on modern poetry (and culture) is almost incalculable. At least here in America they changed the way people approached poetry, the expectations they had for how it should look and sound, bringing a freedom and openness that is also certainly reflected in the art and music of that time. It all came together and flowered into something much greater than any one poem or poet. And then of course that cultural movement that the Beats helped usher in fizzled or transmogrified or something. I do wonder though if prose poetry and flash fiction, for example, would have developed the way they did without the Beats.

As far as generalizing about the quality of the poems: that is harder to do. How does one compare Ginsberg with Gary Snyder, for example? I'd rather go a poem at a time and then I can say some poems have stood the test of time for me. I believe I first read Howl in 1975, so close to 40 years ago. I still think it's stunning writing but like Eliot's The Wasteland, it's a huge investment of time and effort to read and appreciate. These days it seems like people want to read things in about 12 seconds and be on their way! So maybe that sort of writing feels old-fashioned or some such now. To me, the Beats are about writing that emulates the improvisation of jazz so I guess it stands to reason that I'd like that sort of writing. John Clellon Holmes novel The Horn is probably my favorite piece from the Beat oeuvre.

 

[bogusagain]

Bogus, as I mentioned in my interview I was given a copy of Howl and also had the opportunity to see Ginsberg read a bunch of times and Burroughs once--and saw many lesser-known poets from that period at readings. That was in the late 1970s, which was past their prime but some were still around and active. .

It was in the early seventies I got into them but never got to see any of them. You lucky thing. But when people came to Britain, what was meant, they came to London. Britain, like France, are city states where Paris and London dominate everything and outside, you bearly get to see anyone or any thing.

I think their influence on modern poetry (and culture) is almost incalculable. At least here in America they changed the way people approached poetry, the expectations they had for how it should look and sound, bringing a freedom and openness that is also certainly reflected in the art and music of that time. .

Unfortunately here, I don't think they had a huge lasting influence on mainstram poetry, if they had, I think poetry would be more popular than it is. Here, poetry is a cultural ghetto dominated by very few people. Too many small minds in poetry here, even UK pop poets here got rejected even though they outsold all the established poets. Petty jealousy I think.

It all came together and flowered into something much greater than any one poem or poet. And then of course that cultural movement that the Beats helped usher in fizzled or transmogrified or something. I do wonder though if prose poetry and flash fiction, for example, would have developed the way they did without the Beats..

They broke rules which seemed give permission for others to follow and many did. Unfortunately in the UK, the bastion of poetry is fortress Oxbridge. Though all they do is make poetry more and more irrelevant.

As far as generalizing about the quality of the poems: that is harder to do. How does one compare Ginsberg with Gary Snyder, for example? I'd rather go a poem at a time and then I can say some poems have stood the test of time for me. I believe I first read Howl in 1975, so close to 40 years ago. I still think it's stunning writing but like Eliot's The Wasteland, it's a huge investment of time and effort to read and appreciate. These days it seems like people want to read things in about 12 seconds and be on their way! So maybe that sort of writing feels old-fashioned or some such now. To me, the Beats are about writing that emulates the improvisation of jazz so I guess it stands to reason that I'd like that sort of writing. John Clellon Holmes novel The Horn is probably my favorite piece from the Beat oeuvre.

Its a fair point about generalising but because of the improvisation, which I think is there, beat writers seem to be very eratic. Ginsberg could produce a piece of genious like Howl, I still think it is one of the greatest poems of the 20th century and then turn out utter rubbish (in my opinion) and he wasn't the only one to be so eratic. Not that being eratic is necessarily a bad thing, maybe how they worked, there was always going to be a big variation in quality.

 

[Jerry20020]

The poem has some good lines - but for every good one there are three or four that are complete drek. The "best minds of his generation"? Consider who he's talking about here: Kerouac, Neil Cassidy, etc. Were these the best minds of the 50s? Post-war America.

 

[Angeline]

It was in the early seventies I got into them but never got to see any of them. You lucky thing. But when people came to Britain, what was meant, they came to London. Britain, like France, are city states where Paris and London dominate everything and outside, you bearly get to see anyone or any thing.



Unfortunately here, I don't think they had a huge lasting influence on mainstram poetry, if they had, I think poetry would be more popular than it is. Here, poetry is a cultural ghetto dominated by very few people. Too many small minds in poetry here, even UK pop poets here got rejected even though they outsold all the established poets. Petty jealousy I think.




They broke rules which seemed give permission for others to follow and many did. Unfortunately in the UK, the bastion of poetry is fortress Oxbridge. Though all they do is make poetry more and more irrelevant.




Its a fair point about generalising but because of the improvisation, which I think is there, beat writers seem to be very eratic. Ginsberg could produce a piece of genious like Howl, I still think it is one of the greatest poems of the 20th century and then turn out utter rubbish (in my opinion) and he wasn't the only one to be so eratic. Not that being eratic is necessarily a bad thing, maybe how they worked, there was always going to be a big variation in quality.

There was definitely a quality of hucksterism about Ginsberg, seeing him chanting and dancing with the bells and concertina was a sideshow attraction. And he knew it, I believe, and exploited it because it brought him attention and it furthered his career and feathered his nest, so to speak. I always felt like good for him, more power to him, you know? He was a poet who wasn't concerned about making a spectacle of himself if it furthered his means. And he was far from the first to have done that.

 

[Setanta84]

Form is not Howl's legacy. Whitman and others had popularized free verse in the English-speaking world generations before.

I'd argue the true legacy of Howl is making American verse in particular and English-speaking verse in general more accepting of frank language regarding sexuality--particularly homosexuality. And the credit there goes equally to the work itself and City Lights and its defense team in the resulting obscenity trial.

Whitman, for example, was a gay man, but you need to be a sophisticated reader and in possession of more recent scholarship based on his personal papers to say, for sure, that significant portions of his collection are written from the perspective of a gay man. He's subtle about it and the "I" in Whitman is democratized to the point that the division between the author and America as a whole is always a little fuzzy.

With Ginsberg, you have the first major work of poetry in America where homosexuality is engaged openly, honestly, and without euphemism.

 

[bogusagain]

The poem has some good lines - but for every good one there are three or four that are complete drek. The "best minds of his generation"? Consider who he's talking about here: Kerouac, Neil Cassidy, etc. Were these the best minds of the 50s? Post-war America.

Does it really matter who he was talking about? If you don't know who he's talking about, its a pretty good line and you have to consider the era, there was a rejection of the previous generation's values.

All the beats have feet of clay but then, just about everyone who is scrutinised too closely don't stand up to examination.

 

[Angeline]

Form is not Howl's legacy. Whitman and others had popularized free verse in the English-speaking world generations before.

I'd argue the true legacy of Howl is making American verse in particular and English-speaking verse in general more accepting of frank language regarding sexuality--particularly homosexuality. And the credit there goes equally to the work itself and City Lights and its defense team in the resulting obscenity trial.

Whitman, for example, was a gay man, but you need to be a sophisticated reader and in possession of more recent scholarship based on his personal papers to say, for sure, that significant portions of his collection are written from the perspective of a gay man. He's subtle about it and the "I" in Whitman is democratized to the point that the division between the author and America as a whole is always a little fuzzy.

With Ginsberg, you have the first major work of poetry in America where homosexuality is engaged openly, honestly, and without euphemism.

Also true. Ginsberg's poetry is about all kinds of freedom, but mainly sexual freedom and its unashamed expression. And as far as form, one could argue not only for the influence of Whitman (which is obvious to anyone who has read them both), but that when Ginzy began interspersing chanting and singing with reading, he was calling on much older oral poetry traditions. He was imho aware of the literary canon and the place he had in it. I never see him as trying to be outside literary tradition but rather bringing a bold new voice to it.

 

[twelveoone]

for fifty years, as did the wasteland
and probably more so in the US, not English poetry

but come to think of it, who was the best minds of the 50's?

I come up with two

Edward Teller and Col. Tom Parker

four if you throw in the 60's

Stan Lee and Col. Sanders

and then a dry spell, till we hit

Dan Quayle and Col. Gaddafi

I saw the best minds of my generation turn into Dan Quayles, become Republicans, Scientologists.
Friend each other on facebook...

but as for Howl in the context of the times, it is exactly what Poetry and society needed, a good strong kick in the ass

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,

very powerful line, really have to impart some thought to that one,
in context of the time, lobotomies where big, homosexuality was if not a crime, at least a mental illness...
Ah, well, Al was gay, and could be subject to 'treatment'...

Well, Al and Howl was just what America and poetry needed. Sometimes I think some of his later 'crap' was more of a game of "just who is kidding who", which is also what America and poetry needs, but probably doesn't want.

 

[butters]

welcome home, 12oh

 

[twelveoone]

Does it really matter who he was talking about? If you don't know who he's talking about, its a pretty good line and you have to consider the era, there was a rejection of the previous generation's values.

All the beats have feet of clay but then, just about everyone who is scrutinised too closely don't stand up to examination.

somewhere there is a poem in this, to be recited with bongos
Ozymandias in Quicksand
I'll work on the iambs