Howl and Other Poems

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful!
Review: What more could you ask for in a spoken word cd(?): Allen Ginsberg reading some of his best work! This cd is a wonderful introduction to the man's work (and beat-poetry in general), and because all the poems are performed by Ginsberg himself, even scholars will appreciate it. "Howl" is, arguably, the most important poem of the 20th century (or at least the second half of the 20th century) on a literary and cultural level. The other poems here are good too, most notably "America." There are plenty of spoken-words cds available out there with people other than Ginsberg reading his work...but most of them are laughably melodramatic and don't capture the poignancy and laid-back spice that his voice does.

Rating:
Summary: and now you're really in the total animal soup of time-
Review: "Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul!"
"where the faculties of the skull no longer admit the worm of the senses"
"watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?"
"to think at the sun"
"You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower!"
"Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles!"
"...nor me looking around at the horrible dream..."
"...and a soiled dry center cotton tuft like a used shaving brush that's been lying under the garage for a year."

A small selection of Ginsberg's being that shot out at me when I read Howl. Wow. What a beautiful, enraged, adoring, curious, imaginative, pensive, wonderous, transcendent, sweet, observant, sensitive collection of poems this is.

Howl is a brilliant imagining of a generation of souls careening through existence, full of action and movement. The famous opening line, "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked..." sets off a force of vivid description and incredible depth. Howl continues through the devious Moloch, to rest in Rockland where his love laid. A Supermarket in California is sweet understanding, peaceful and simple in public. In the other poems live the Sun's power, life exposed in the presense of dead flowers and the baggage of life. In Song, the most gorgeous of the collection, love's force is bowed down to. And in America Ginsberg asks questions that almost 50 years later I wonder on, and wish for answers to.

This is a classic little book. Full of infinite beauty and life. Something I can return to over and over.


Rating:
Summary: America's Radical Poet
Review: Allen Ginsberg's poem "America" in the Howl collection is excellent. Ginsberg has been called the best post-1945 poet in America. I think that is certainly true of his poetry from the 1950s and '60s, if not later. It's funny that "Howl" was called obscene when first published and such a big fuss was made about it--drawn-out trial, etc. It really is one of the great works of poetry of the 20th century, in the same way that Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" is of the previous century. What Ginsberg did with language was something radical, refreshing, hip and new, and his messages had great appeal to those disgusted with the Establishment and with various forms of social injustice. As you read Ginsberg, some of his poetical phrases can be hard to decipher, but for every obscure line the poem is often saved by the next line which is beautiful and crystal-clear. What he writes about in "Howl" is somewhat of a different world from ours, physically--a world of Dharma bums, hipsters, Jazz, Buddhism, Dadaism, Communism, etc... but emotionally, what he writes is very relevent to our times because his work is an attack on America's materialism and social complacency.

David Rehak
author of "Poems From My Bleeding Heart"