Rating: 
Summary: Has remarkable resonance for a very unpoetic age. . .
Review: Poetry thrives in the worst of ways thanks in no small part to this influential but strikingly unpoetic short collection which introduced to the world the concept of Beat poetry. The poems themselves are not remarkable except for a certain kind of hyperbolic candor they exude.It is therefore not surprising that the young in particular find profit in reading and commenting on them. The adolescent and the thick-headed gravitate to such 'poetry' in this as in all generations. So much the worse for them and for poetry. But the case is worse still for us. As far back as imperial Rome, we find rebel poets such as Catullus turning their talent towards sarcasm and social commentary. In contrast to Ginsberg's loopy mix of ideology and phantasmagoria, Rome's "rock-and-roll" poet was all rudeness and sharp one-liners. His well-phrased - though similarly timely - jabs might shock or cut, but his audience could recognize their artful, playful character. Here, by contrast, mysticism and eschatology, Whitman-esque rambling and anarchic paranoia, nostalgic Trotskyism and reminiscences of drug abuse all fuse into. . . Well, nothing. And this is precisely the reason for its failure as poetry. But then why should we expect a fusion from such a pathetic hodge-podge? Ginsberg paints a generation of self-absorbed hangers-on for whom America's men-in-suits should feel somehow responsible. Come on! One needn't be Virgil or Dante to expect little aesthetic nourishment from ad-men or town committee members... was ever the world otherwise? He does not deny the pleasure-seeking of his compatriots. He rather encourages the hipster quest for kicks, at once savage, street-wise, defiant, and, in its fay pretense, even a tad rococo. One definitely detects a game of "We're more lost than you," being directed at elder poets who comprehended and identified with 'The Wasteland' and the Hemingway novels. Read Ted Morgan's excellent biography of Ginsberg's friend William S. Burroughs Literary Outlaw (ISBN: 0380708825) to discover just how ridiculously lost most of these young 'Beats' actively aspired to be. Describing his inspiration for 'Howl' Ginsberg wrote: "I'd had a beatific illumination years before during which I'd heard Blake's ancient voice and saw the universe unfold in my brain." Ginsberg virtually references Blake with his personified God of American crass materialism, Moloch. Like Blake's Urizen and Rintrah and Los, Moloch is a personification of fomenting psychological and social forces. Here, a figment of all the poet fears. But unlike Blake's multi-layered and careful embodiments, Moloch is a hodge-podge... a perfect concave mirror of Ginsberg's own mystical hodge-podge self. And I will end on this point: the generation (let's face it -- the tiny minority within a generation) who felt the resonance of this poem were themselves internal jumbles and hodge-podges. They were and are rootless amoral 'seekers' --'mystic' only in their absence of substantial affect -- that all authentically deep and spiritual people will know well to pity or else shun.
Rating: 
Summary: Read it for yourself
Review: Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of self-appointed critics who, in order to try to convince others of their own individuality and intellectual honesty, feel the need to let everyone know that they consider Ginsberg (and every other so-called "Beat" for that matter) to be an overrated hack and more of a celebrity than a poet and blah, blah, blah, blah. It is true that Ginsberg's style has been imitated by far too many lesser poets who, obviously, don't posess anything close to the man's talent and it is also true that there's an equal number of people who claim to love Ginsberg but have never actually bothered to sit down and really read anything beyond the first page of "Howl." Inetivably, one wishes that all of these presumed literary critics (regardless of where they stand) would just shut up, read the poems for themselves, and form their own opinions regardless of what the current trend is. For if they did, they would discover a very talented poet who, even if he occasionally seemed to be repeating and parodying himself as he got older, still created some of the strongest American poetry of the latter 20th Century. While Kaddish remains his strongest work of poetry, his much more famous poem "Howl" still carries more of a raw, exhilirating anger. Written to be read aloud, Howl is basically a cry against the conformity of 1950s America but the anger found within still reverberates almost half a century later. Certainly, his vision of a drug-abusing community of outcasts wandering along darkened city streets remains as relavent as ever. Like any apocalyptic poem, it can be credibly charges that at times, Howl is superficial and there's not much beyond shocking images. I don't necessarily disagree with this -- Howl, for instance, doesn't carry the same emotional weight as Ginsberg's more personal Kaddish. However, if Howl is all image, they're still very powerful images. Would I feel the same passion for this poem if I didn't know the much-reported stories of Ginsberg's "best minds of my generation destroyed by madness?" In short, if the beats hadn't been so celebrated by the media, would this poem have the same power? Honestly, who cares? The fact of the matter is that yes, the beats were celebrated (or hyped depending on your point of view) by the media and Howl is a powerful poem. All other considerations are simply unimportant doublespeak. As for the other poems contained with Howl, they are a mixed batch but all have their value. Some are a little too obviously based on Whitman (much as countless other poets based too much on Ginsberg) but they all have their points of interest. Its obvious that none of them were chosen to overshadow Howl but to a certain extent, that works very well. After the rage and madness of Howl, its good to have these other poems to "come down" with. With all this talk of anger and rage, I should also mention that Ginsberg's sense of joy is a component of his poetry that too many critics either fail to mention or ignore all together. Whatever you may think of his talent, it is obvious that Ginsberg loved poetry and found his greatest happiness through the discovery of new forms of poetic expressions. For all of its apocalyptic ragings, Howl never grows shrill because one can sense the fact that Ginsberg had a lot of fun composing (and performing) the poem. A few years before his own death, I was lucky enough to attend one of Allen Ginsberg's readings. Though he read mostly from Kaddish and his shorter poems (perhaps, understandably, trying to make sure we understood he actually had written other poems beyond the one everyone kept citing), he also read a bit from Howl. He proved to be an amazing reader, going over these words he must have seen over a million times past, with an almost childlike enthusiasm and joy. As he did this, I looked out at the others in the audience and basically, I saw rows and rows of identical looking "intellectuals," all posessing the same dead-serious expression on their face, nodding at each relavent point as if to make sure everyone understood that they understood genius. Contrasting their forced seriousness with Ginsberg's uninhibited joy, I realized that there was only one true tragesy as far as Allen Ginsberg was concerned and that was the fact that his self-appointed acolytes always took him for more seriously then he did himself. To consider Howl and Ginsberg without joy is like considering language without words.
Rating:
Summary: why is it that if it is beat i like it?
Review: Some of the greatest poetry ever. this is absolutely fabulous. My personal favorites are Sunflower Sutra, America and Part 2 of Howl (Moloch). Let's run down the list: Sunflower Sutra: Great poem, says a lot, what's not to like? America: Probably my second favorite Ginsberg (after Death to Van Gogh's Ear which you can find in Kaddish). Absolutely fabulous. Reading the satire and the disgust in his words means a lot. Critizes the Iron Curtain and so many other things about life in the Cold War. Moloch: interesting too. Very critical as well (like most of Ginsberg), it builds on the first part which i don't think is as good but fabulous nonetheless. Anyway, this will not be a waste of your money. Get this!
Rating:
Summary: a masterpiece by a mad genious!
Review: More that just a book of timeless ingenious poetry. It is a response to America during the late forties and early fifties, it sums up the ideas and feelings of a generation of young americans beat by the remains of a world war. It is the most influential work on the American poetical voice Walt Whitman. There will never be another poet like Allen. Buddha, Vishnu, God, may you rest his soul.
Rating:
Summary: Valuable Introduction
Review: Good introduction to Ginsberg's poetry, sampling some of his best work, especially the influential, (and now almost canonical), "Howl". Ginsberg's work is almost liturgical in cadence, secular litanies of the lost and bewildered. Excellent primer on Ginsberg's work.
Rating:
Summary: Howl and howl and howl it
Review: This is the most important long poem in 20th century American poetry, a must. You can't talk about american poetry without reading it a few times. For me Ginsberg is the poet of "Howl" and "Kaddish", nothing else he wrote ever came closer to these two long poems.
Rating: 
Summary: Opening Blinded Minds for Beatniks
Review: the descritption parallels kerouac yet with his humbleness describing friends foes and hardships. painting with words instead of a brush. Compleing poem for anyone, the homosexual overtones are immesible by its genius. no wonder why he was such an inspiration to all he came in contact with. Truly he motivated artist such as Burroughs Cassady and kerouac. I am glad i bought it so i can be inspired time after time. thanks Ginsberg rucksack warrior
Rating:
Summary: An amazing book.....
Review: When I first read this book in high school, I found it both disturbing and profane. Now I still do, but it's in a much better way.... Ginsberg came of age in a time of both terror and hypocrasy. During the Presidency of Eisenhower, we were edging toward hot war with the Soviets and on our own people. Kids were just finding psychoactives for the first time-- they were just learning to bend their minds and change their souls. Americans were just hearing of Louis-Ferdinand Celine and Andre Gide and Oswald Spengler and all of the other literary people who can be heard in the words of Ginsberg.... And he processed them (though some of them now would seem more high culture than him) and came up with the knowing, tortured voice of a generation. A voice that is not so different from the voice of my generation-- one of trouble, angst, unhesistancy, and spiritual malaise. Whereas he saw his generation starving, hysterical, naked in a mental institution, we do not even have the clothes to care so much.... However old you are, read this book. It will make you think. Read Gregory Corso too.... he was wonderful but has been forgotten....
Rating:
Summary: Howl for a Generation
Review: I remeber first reading Allen Ginsbergs Howl one night on the Sunset Strip it seemed to explode across the night like a star which everyone looks at and gos Aww... He was the maestro of eternal prose which set fire to the American continet and spread across the land setting fire to conventional prose and structure by calling old poetmen to account and crossing the lines that had been drawn. He reads like a beautiful juxtaposition of Shelly, Blake, Rimbaud, Baudilerre and Whitman. His book will open the etneral doors of heaven and set free the thoughts of anyone waiting to listen the eternal prose and beginning should flow down New Yorks Greenwich Village across a continent that is all land and people to the doors of his cottage in San Fransisco rising and stagggering like an angel over tennements and howling '...I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by maddness starving hysterical naked dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix angel headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinary of night...' A master A Teacher and the heir of Whitmans Fabled dammed.. 'If your not safe then neither am I'
Rating: 
Summary: A mixed bag.
Review: Ginsberg is perhaps an "important" poet, and I admit that "Howl" has a certain frothy energy. But aside from the oceanic rhetoric, there's not much in these poems; it's the kind of poetry that no doubt sounds great when recited before a crowd, but doesn't really bear much scrutiny. I was tired of hearing about the best minds of Allen Ginsberg's generation long before the bombastic, repetitive verses of the title poem came to a close. A few of the additional poems included, though, are decent enough, and manage to communicate a sense of the transcendent in the stuff of everyday life.
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