Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg contains 50 plus pages of mind-altering poetry. This book may change the way you feel about
The title poem “Howl: For Carl Solomon” pays tribute to the Beats’ all-hours-of-the-day exploits, while addressing deeper, controversial (at the time) human issues, like poverty, insanity, sexuality, God, freedom of expression, and the consequences for breaking the law. Ginsberg begins “Howl” with the now iconic line “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,” setting up the idea that he feels as though he and his closest friends have come short of attaining the American dream and have nearly (or have in fact) died in the process of trying to find it. In this and other poems, Ginsberg manipulates form as a way of creating his own individual responses to all of these issues. “Howl” is written in a style that Ginsberg experiments with throughout the book, where the length of each line is determined by how much the reader might be able to say in one breath. This has the effect to make each line stand on its own as a unique part of the poem (and of life), but at the same time Ginsberg’s repetition of the first words of lines draws the entire poem together. “Howl” comprises nearly half of this book, and it is clear that this poem is one of Ginsberg’s most important works.
While the majority of the poems are written between 1955-56, Ginsberg includes several of his earlier poems (1952-54) at the end of the book. As a reader it is interesting to see these poems in comparison to “Howl,” for instance, which is much cruder and less hopeful than Ginsberg’s earlier poems. One might see the evolution of Ginsberg through these poems because strands of later Ginsberg can be seen in these early works. Certainly, it is apparent that a great number of life-changing events happened to Ginsberg between 1952’s “Wild Orphan” and 1956’s “Howl.”
After reading the book, it is clear that Ginsberg has a thorough understanding of the styles and traditions that came before him. The author touches on a number of styles of writing in addition to his breath line form. Ginsberg writes the poem “A Supermarket in
There is no doubt that Ginsberg and the rest of the writers of the Beat generation partook in their fair share of drug and alcohol use, and Ginsberg is able to capture these frantic, exciting times in his poetry. The author recounts true stories from his life and the lives of his closest friends in these poems, repeatedly hitting on the theme question: What is
Aunt Lettuce I Want to Peek Under Your Skirt by Charles Simic
ReplyDeleteIf you are looking for a unique book of poems to read I would encourage you to pick this one up. All of the poems involve a certain aura of sexuality with them as you can see by the title of the book. I didn’t see any consistent tradition maintained throughout the book. This actually kept me reading because I never knew how the next poem, stanza, or even line would be structured. This book seems to be a single project book that approaches and discusses the sexuality of the female body. The poems individually seem to attempt to tackle certain oddities and tensions felt between a female and male figure. I get the impression the speaker in all of the poems is male because only the naked female figure is objectified. Formally the poems in the book take many forms there are some unrhymed free verse poems while others are very prose oriented. I really enjoyed how different the structure of the lines was in each poem. I noticed in a lot of the free verse poems the lines were end jammed making it a bit choppy for the reader unless they paid attention to it. Visually the appearance of the poems on each page kept me on my toes as well. Some poems had short stanzas while others were much longer and the first one was a single line on the page. The diction of the poems were pretty consistently short and choppy across the board with exception to the more prose like poems. The vocabulary was very erotic and referenced iconic authors or philosophers that were also seen as erotic figures. The main tension of the book was the imagery of the nude female and the tensions it brings to the male persona. Each poem attacked this tension in a different way. There were a few poems that seemed to full of an infatuation, some disgust, and many did so with erotic thoughts and provocative language. There doesn’t seem to be a resolution to the tension carried throughout the book. This book of poems left me asking myself what the hell I read and as I reread all the poems I began to understand the sexual tension the author wanted to portray.
On that note, this book also contained a drawing or sketch for each poem. These images were pretty explicit and often were nude images in provocative positions described in the poems. The images created a further tension with the reader because it almost felt as if you were suppose to be seeing these nude female images in the manner that you see them. Even the title fills you with an anxiety because we are not supposed to have urges to peek under our relatives’ skirts. I don’t know what kind of reading you people like to do but if you want a tension filled erotic dominated book to read, pick this one.