Lorca, what are you doing down by the melons???

Howl for Carl Solomon: Fifteen Years Later And Then Some.

So back in university, back in the day, one of the books assigned by my american history professor was HOWL and other poems by Allen Ginsberg...I've been seeing somePocket Poets editions of this floating around der bookstore and decided to take another look at it. (like most reading assignments in college, I think I only read part of it, so this seemed like a good idea, you know... After 15 years of thinking I had gotten the gist of something with a cursury(sp?) glance...going back and taking a second look and finding I was of course mistaken or at least not full appreciating said thing.)

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

Origionally I thought Ginsberg was exaggerating a bit here. I guess I was thinking that back in the fifties he and his hippy-poet friends were running around dropping acid and bieng stoned and drunk like so many frat brothers spending their parent's money and (hating?) (loving?)the privlege that came with being white american males.

Since I've been shelving lit-crit I've noticed that Ginsberg is listed in books as and african american author(???)...written by an african american I guess this line has a slightly different cast. Also I realise now that what I considered frat boy behavior in 1991 was probably influenced greatly by this miniscule book of poems. And that Ginsberg was probably very involved in politics...maybe even a humble sort of leader. I still don't know that much about him.
He was born in NJ and was a small person according to the forward by William Carlos Williams.

I didn't remember that this was a poem in three parts and that the first part is one very, very long sentence. I have new found respect for Howl simply on the basis of it bieng an remarkable grammatical feat.

And then there is the part about Rockland Rockland Rockland which I just read this morning. I cherish this now in a way that I couldn't have before. Now that I know that the rockland being refered to is a mental hospital and now that I know what those are about...I read each line of this section with much more empathy than I had 15 years ago.

I have to wrap this up and get dressed for work...but I want to publicly declair that this tiny book is not the hersheys kiss of literature...to use such a comercial reference would debase it. It seems to be some kind of dense gem though...and I still haven't read the whole thing.

I didn't go to the SDS gathering in Providence, but I did eaves drop on Will B and his friend talking about Universal Health Care reform while I shelved oversized S. American history and Chinese history books.

http://www.rooknet.com/beatpage/writers/ginsberg.html
http://www.idiom.com/~wcs/howl.html
http://www.howlfestival.com/
http://members.tripod.com/~Sprayberry/poems/howl.txt