In his 1956 poem, “Howl”, Allen Ginsberg upset conventions, both literary and social, filling pages with his lascivious and rebellious lamentations and contentious condemnations of orthodoxy, materialism, industrialisation, militarism, and the repression of ideas, amongst other ills. Ginsberg gave a voice to a generation who was disenchanted with their lot, impatient and hostile towards authority, and hungry for meaning and the exchange of ideas and experiences. Ginsberg inherited a tradition, a responsibility, and a status reminiscent of les bohemes of Montmartre or Montparnasse, in that his unorthodox, antiestablishment, and intellectual approach to life, politics, sex, relationships, and morals reflected movements within the counter-culture of his generation. Similarly, Ginsberg was the “father” of the Beat movement in America, and handed down to following generations a similar tradition of capturing, or anthologizing a generation, voicing concern, questioning authority, raising awareness, and shifting conventions. As a generational icon, Ginsberg influenced lives and his poem helped to shape political and social discourse; we can look to Ginsberg and Howl to understand how an icon, and not just their art, facilitates the vicarious uprising of the oppressed, often times manifested in youth or minorities.In The Poem That Changed America: “Howl” Fifty Years Later, a purportedly diverse group of essayists attempt to explain the complex and enduring influence that Allen Ginsberg’s controversial 1956 poem, “Howl”, had on them, and as the title suggests, on America. Unfortunately the book fails to represent a cross-section of America, and only offers a variegated group of poets, - perhaps economically, socially and culturally diverse - who (with several exceptions) are hungry for a forum of congratulatory justification for their attempted bohemianism or perhaps just plain justification for their morally questionable lives. It attempts, I argue, through its narratives, to prove the poem’s generational relevance and immutable timelessness, and to this extent the book is a success; it celebrates a perennial questioning of authority, youthful rebellion, stands as an anthem for the unification and perpetuation of counter-cultural movements and importantly represents the powerless, the helpless, and the browbeaten.When “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was released in 1991, Nirvana, but particularly Kurt Cobain, became a cultural icon and the anarchic voice of a new disenchanted generation. At the time, the revolution of sex, and drugs, and the rejection of cultural conventions was represented by the Generation X-ers; “Teen Spirit” and “Howl” accomplished a feat in their respective generations, and this is to celebrate “those who find the world’s limits intolerable,…who are forever unappeased, however comic or self-annihilating their posture, however tragic their fate.”[1] Beyond the generation of “Howl”, it is arguable that the poem persists in its ability to allow its readers to meld with it their own identities, generation, experiences and aspirations. This aspect of the poem makes it a “generational testimonial…opening up each generation anew”[2].More than just relevance to generations, the book aims to show how the poem provided a voice to minorities or oppressed groups and furthermore provided validation for the lifestyles, decisions, and beliefs of such groups. The authors express gratitude to the poem for authenticating their right to homosexuality, and others illustrate how the poem lucidly described the suffering they felt as an ethnic minority, exiled, and homeless.To this extent, the other accomplishment of the book is far different from the first; it illustrates how the poet (artist) reached a level of synonymity with the vagabond, and yet unequivocally, but shockingly, was in vogue with the agitated and disconcerted youth. For “Howl’s” generation, from which most of the essayists in the book write, the self-annihilating loner was romanticized, and the drugged-out, dissatisfied hippies were able to seduce the world with their rants on America’s moral and political poverty. A life of vagrancy, irresponsibility, and sexual exploits gave some the authority to criticize conventions and narrate for America, the story of their corrupt and enervated state. Some authors in the book attempt truth and admit that Ginsberg “created some zone of permission and distinction for himself”[3], and describe the poet as “demanding amnesty for all acts of self-destructiveness, and shifting the blame disingenuously onto society, Moloch”[4] This author demands of the artist, as we must as well, “Why not accept that we are not innocent?”[5]This tradition however, has still been handed down to new generations of vagabonds, rock stars, and artists who continue to represent the youthful search for meaning and disenchantment with the status quo, and who offer a vicarious life of both tragedy and glamour. As Jason Schinder states in his introduction, “It [the poem] helped shake up the order of things, and that always appeals to the rebel in us”.[6] Billy Collins elaborates on the vicarious nature of “Howl”, suggesting that he was, like other youth, “the perfect target for the poem’s wild tone, its delinquent spontaneity, and its revolutionary poetics”.[7] Many of the authors have found in the poem a reflection of their own tragedies, and are able to project blame and responsibility onto the systems and society around them, perpetuating a cycle of victimization and irresponsibility. In his 1978 Harvard Address, Russian novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn controversially berated Western immorality, shallow spirituality, and the unrestrained freedoms which have led to an empty and servile existence. Solzhenitsyn stated that the West had been reduced to a state of turmoil where “the world belongs to mankind and all the defects of life are caused by wrong social systems which must be corrected”[8], and he ultimately decried the loss of individual moral (and religious) responsibility, and the increasing tendencies towards self-indulgent humanism, avarice, despair, and dissatisfaction with life. I strongly believe that this criticism can be laid against Ginsberg (and consequently his followers), and it is this rhetoric of unculpability which permeates this ode to “Howl”. In fact, it reflects in part, the reality of why the icons, with voices, who retaliate against and disparage the structures and institutions of oppression, have grand followings and why meaning is found in their work.In conclusion, we must return to the claim of the editor, Jason Shinder, who suggests that ‘Howl’ was “the poem that changed America”. Perhaps, if I had the opportunity, I would rephrase this to state, “the poem that never ends”. Lacking this luxury, I can imagine that Howl captured a time when America was changing, and furthermore, that the poem and its author, represent one particularly dramatic change; the voices of the underdog, of opposition, of suffering, and of diversity were exclaimed and heard. As Jane Kramer states, “Allen changed a world”, and follows by noting that although the “world has turned out to be much smaller than most of us hoped it was or could be…the change was indelible”.[9] The multiple voices of The Poem that Changed America: “Howl” Fifty Years Later attest to this change.
[1] Frank Bidart, “A Cross in the Void”, The Poem That Changed America: “Howl” Fifty Years Later, ed. Jason Shinder, (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux: New York, 2006), 247.
[2] Eliot Katz, “Radical Eyes: Political Poetics and ‘Howl’”, in The Poem That Changed America: “Howl” Fifty Years Later, ed. Jason Shinder, (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux: New York, 2006), 192.
[3] Mark Doty, “Human Seraphim: ‘Howl’, Sex, and Holiness”, in The Poem That Changed America: “Howl” Fifty Years Later, ed. Jason Shinder, (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux: New York, 2006), 13.
[4] Phillip Lopate, “’Howl’ and Me”, in The Poem That Changed America: “Howl” Fifty Years Later, ed. Jason Shinder, (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux: New York, 2006),136.
[5] Ibid, 136.
[6] Jason Schinder, “Introduction”, in The Poem That Changed America: “Howl” Fifty Years Later, ed. Jason Shinder, (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux: New York, 2006), xxv.
[7] Billy Collins, “My ‘Howl’”, in The Poem That Changed America: “Howl” Fifty Years Later, ed. Jason Shinder, (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux: New York, 2006), 100.
[8] Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “A World Split Apart”, 1978 Harvard Address. Retrieved from <<http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/solzhenitsyn/harvard1978.html>>
[9] Jane Kramer, “The Best Mind”, in The Poem That Changed America: “Howl” Fifty Years Later, ed. Jason Shinder, (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux: New York, 2006), 158.
