Rating: 
Summary: The only sweepingly brilliant american poem in existence.
Review: Howl is the quintessential american poem that defied its times analysis and slapped the collective doldrums of its society into spattering degrees that have landed since then,still do right now,& will continue doing so until the very same society that the greatest beat bard rebelled on still exists.Each of the poems lend a direct punch through a brilliant array of repetition,long lines,obscenity,vulgarisms,& unique thought.Whitman couldnt claim a more greater son.The fact that this collection changed world literary history comes as no surprise at all.After more than 40 yrs of inspiration & derision,it still continues to amaze & fascinate the current mind with its intense jugulation of words ordering on the imprinting sublime.I was jumpstarted to write after reading this book,the vast plethora of radical differences it evokes opened my mind to immense structures that i wanted to get my hands on,ridding all inhibitions that threateningly barred my way.A great first book to read for the initiate.
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Summary: Ginsberg and pieces of glass jargon wounded still Howling
Review: asphalt stained oversoul division of feeling hanging in basements all orbiting around Ginsberg and his Howling banner revolutionizing the industrial age several years gone in Eastern Europe's ever crooked spine and the Caspian Sea drinking down Chernobyl's fruition take that and crush in cracked palms of silver Allen Ginsberg is perhaps the most stimulating poet I've ever read. The preceeding was a tribute to his splendour. Read the poem. Write a verse. Change your preconceived notions and judgements.
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Summary: Brain surgery on the 20th century
Review: HOWL defies comparison with anything. Ginsberg cracks open the mind of America--while riding on an hallucinogenic roller coaster--and takes a studied look inside. The style is incredible, pyrotechnical, it transcends words themselves, taking on the characteristics of a hieroglyph. Using all elements of the profane, he creates something holy. Should be required reading in all bars, bowling alleys and elementary schools.
Rating:
Summary: jolly ,omnogamic ,extrenous, celestial,and perennial.
Review: light slips suddenly from your armchair and words jump
to myknees like jolly jew omnogamic american
extrenuousbeat
celestial allen
perennial howl
light fades and words in dismay deserted my body like
good bye poet good bye man good by american lad.
Rating:
Summary: Allen Ginsberg - A mind in Synch with the Beat Rhythms.
Review: Ginsberg - The name flashes at you like some familiar face in a crowd of a thousand faces. He grasps every thread of the Beat Generation and embodies it in his work. The poem "A Supermarket in California" details a mystic journey into the thoughts of a Wandering writer who, in such a mind, asks " ...and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?" The book "Howl and other Poems" wonderfully pieces together some of the most enticing and thought-provoking works of Allen Ginsberg. This book allows you to sample poems from the reknowned "Howl", to the light airiness of"Asphodel". At one time, Ginsberg was compared to the genius mind of Walt Whitman, by using the similar style of repetition in his poetry. Now, Ginsberg is noted for his own syle of Genius, and his use of "mental tatalization" that simply cannot be compared with any other, even those in the Beat Generation
Rating:
Summary: Howl-Allen Ginsberg's disembodied cry from Hades.
Review: Allen Ginsberg's Howl is W.C. Williams vision
of a "New Measure" made concrete. It is not only
a poem, as such but a lyrical cry that echoes
throughout the page and the reader's mind as he/she
lets the words rebound off a boundless
mind/soul. It is as if Ginsberg broke free from the word-form lines that confine thought and let his untampered ideas flow free onto the page
and then just leave them there to reform themselves
in the readers mind exactly as Ginsberg thought
them. He not only cast his un-strained thoughts onto the page but also poured them into a mind-
breath mould that allowed them to be measured by each breath the mind takes, re-inhaling the
glorious fumes with the base repitition of "Who..."
This not only gives the poem a measurable quality but
also an ethereal quality because it is not measured
physically but with each breath of the mind.
The second stanza is one of industrial wickedness
and power-hunger as well as divine-right rule and
god-like evil. It shows Moloch as The Tyrant and
money, corruption and greed as his arms, legs and blood.
The whole poems shines like a glossy white garage
on a soot covered hill.
Rating:
Summary: He saw the best minds of his generation destroyed by madness
Review: ....and wrote about it. Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" is one of the great works of modern literature. This is poetry from the heart, but more importantly, from the gut. Ginsberg writes with such guttural, visceral venom that it's easy to see why, in the taboo-ridden 1950's, he was so controversial, not just in "Howl" but also in poems such as "America". It's not controversy-courting material, however, it's simply Ginsberg telling it like it is, or at least was. Here, poetry is taken from the sole preserve of the romantics and transported to an almost documentary-like raw social comment, yet it's accessible and supremely enjoyable, even funny in parts. An essential read.
Rating: 
Summary: straight from the sixties
Review: A must read for those who have an interest in the sixties. Ginsberg is able to express much of what this time period was all about. The growing pains of a generation and the struggle for identity in poetic verse.
RD McManes
Rating:
Summary: The Essential Ginsberg
Review: This book of Ginsberg's poems are an essential for the Ginsberg reader.
This has "America" and "Howl", 2 of Ginsberg's best poems. This little book of poems was also on a list of banned literature for the contemplation it makes one ponder.
Rating: 
Summary: Mirror of a culture and a generation...with mixed results.
Review: Read "Howl" when I was around 18 and thought it (and still do) a groundbreaking (for various reasons) work. Twenty years later, I find that I don't praise it as quickly and easily as I used to. The images Ginsberg created are, indeed, fantastic and the whole stream of consciousness approach is, more often than not, exhilarating but I sincerely doubt that all those people posting 5 star reviews can honestly tell me what "Howl" is remotely about. Art is subjective I know and where one person sees a brilliant poetic catharsis another sees a slightly over-rated diatribe, no doubt written while under the influence of some "chemical refreshments" so popular within the beatnik culture. I'm aware that "Howl" doesn't necessarily have to have a "meaning" at least not a conventional one, but even employing a surrealist stance and dismissing even the most remote notion of logic, there seems to surface little more than drug induced hallucinations and ravings. Did "Howl" push the envelope? You bet it did. Did it change how poetry was viewed? I believe it did that, too. Is it great poetry? That's totally personal, but it my opinion it serves more as testament of the culture and age from which it emerged than anything bearing any true literary merit.
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