Howl was a modernist Beat poetry work published in 1956 that openly addressed taboo topics like sex, drugs, and homosexuality. It described the lifestyles of Allen Ginsberg's peers in the Beat generation who rejected social and cultural norms. The sexually explicit language in Howl stirred controversy and an obscenity trial but was ultimately ruled to have redeeming social importance. The poem aimed to cry out against repression and mainstream culture through three sections focusing on individuals, social issues, and a message to a friend.

1. Howl, 1956

2. • Howl was published on
November 1, 1956
• Modernist American
Beat Poetry
• Howl takes risks – filled
to the brim with sex,
drugs, and “obscene”
language
• Relevance: Openly and
unabashedly mentions
sexual and emotional
relationships/acts
between men
• Ginsberg is openly gay
and has written many
pieces about other men

3. Beat Generation & Poetry
 1950‟s cultural movement
 “Included rejection of received standards,
innovations in style, experimentation with drugs,
alternative sexualities, an interest in Eastern
religion, a rejection of materialism, and explicit
portrayals of the human condition.”
 Kerouac was the first to use the term „beat
generation‟

4. Howl: A Summary
 As the title suggests, it is a „cry‟ urging other people to
also cry out against repression, capitalism, the
mainstream culture, etc.
 Split into three sections followed by a footnote
 Part I – describing lifestyles and actions, thoughts and
desires of peers, especially those part of Ginsberg‟s beat
generation
 Part II – focuses more on political and social issues
 Part III – addressed to a specific individual (Carl
Solomon)

5. • Ginsberg read
Howl to an
audience in 1955
• Published in 1956
and proved to be
successful
• It became so
successful and
widely spread
that it stirred up
a bit of
controversy…

6. Obscenity
Trial
• Brought to court
because the material
was vulgar and
controversial
• Highly publicized –
literary experts, poets,
and peers spoke out in
favor of the poem
• Judge Clayton W. Horn
eventually ruled that
Howl had “redeeming
social importance”
• Remained relevant

7. Excerpt from Howl

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkNp56UZax4
who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof
waving genitals and manuscripts, who let themselves be fucked in the
ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy, who blew and were
blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and
Caribbean love, who balled in the morning in the evenings in
rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their
semen freely to whomever come who may, who hiccuped endlessly
trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish
Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword,
who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed
shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of
the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass
and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman‟s loom,