"Howl and Other Poems" by Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg wrote the first poem in his 1956 publication, Howl and Other Poems in dedication to his lover, Carl Solomon, someone he met while spending time in a mental institution as an alternative to jail time for petty theft. Not only is “Howl” addressed to Solomon, however, but many of the poems in Ginsberg’s book seem to be a testimony of the connection between these two individuals. Part three of “Howl” actually references the author’s lover by name, the first couple lines reading:“Carl Solomon! I’m with you in Rockland/Where you’re madder than I am.”

These words directly evidence the time the two men spent together in the institution, and, although his lover is never again referenced directly in another of the book’s poems, all of Ginsberg’s pieces carry much the same kind of bitter sweet tone as the first. In addition, Ginsberg’s “America” aggressively attacks his country’s indifferent attitude towards the effect war has on individual psyches. For instance, one of the lines in this particular poem reads, “Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb,” and another, “America I still haven’t told you what you did to uncle Max/after he came home from Russia.” Because Solomon is said to have spent time in the military, lines like this certainly suggest another kind of connection between he and Ginsberg. It is precisely because these kinds of correlations found throughout Howl and Other Poems that the project reads like an utterly personal and very atypical lover letter; likewise, those poems incorporated which do not directly mention Solomon read like the secrets Ginsberg must have shared with him at one point or another. It is for this reason that despite the incredible hardship displayed in Ginsberg’s pieces – for example, the poverty and apathy plaguing America’s inner cities-- the author’s book still seems to love.

The entirety of Howl and Other Poems is written in free verse. In addition, Ginsberg’s poems seem to be influenced immensely by the literary tradition of Walt Whitman, and, in particular, his tendency to use the literary technique of anaphora in his works, as well as end-stopping his poem’s sentences. Ginsberg’s honor of Whitman is not by any means left to guesswork; in fact, within “A supermarket in California,” the author directly addresses the poet in the first line, which reads, “What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman.” Just as Whitman is famous for doing in pieces such as “Oh Captain, My Captain,” Ginsberg starts many of his sentences the same way in this particular poem, always beginning with the word “I.” He also employs this method in “Howl,” in which an incredibly amount of the sentences in part one begin with the word “Who.”

Still, the author’s writing is much different than Whitman’s in the sense that he tries to be much less sophisticated with his language, and instead uses a common, and even crude diction, often incorporating graphic words like “balls” and “cock” that carry sexual overtones. The effect this has is an appeal to a kind of crude emotion – an enticement that makes the reader feel the very grime and hardships the author describes so vividly in his work. For the most part, Ginsberg’s sentences are long and contain little punctuation. There are, however, four exceptions in the end of his book, found within: “An Asphodel,” “Song,” “Wild Orphan,” and the last piece, “In the back of the real.” These four poems have shorter lines, less repetition, and much less incorporation of end-stopping. The very last line in the book reads: “This is the flower of the world,” and, along with the shorter sentences and less reassuring poems, leaves me wondering how exactly Ginsberg feels about the world: hopeful, frustrated, disappointed, resigned? What kind of flower, exactly, is the world? All in all, the book left me curious and wishing Ginsberg could answer my question over tea…or maybe on our way out of a North Country supermarket.