HOWL

by Allen Ginsberg

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,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,

I try to revisit Howl once a year because it has never lost relevance.

Howl was 50 years old in 2006. The reading of Howl in S.F.  helped to launch the Beat generation which in turn led to my generation, in part by turning on us little brothers.

From the World Socialist Website http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/apr200 7/gins-a05.shtml

Last year(2006 ed.) marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of American poet Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," one of the most influential poems of the twentieth century. Very few poems sell over a million copies and get translated into virtually every language in the world. Where a generation could repeat from memory that two roads "diverged in a yellowed wood" that may at other times be "lovely, dark and deep" though there be miles to go before you sleep, so the laconic opening line of "Howl," "I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness," is widely known.

The poem has been annotated, every episode labeled by Ginsberg scholars, who have also written fat biographies and testify to Ginsberg's greatness in documentaries and the better web sites supporting American education. The tykes at the elementary school near the boarding house where "Howl" was pecked out on a second-hand typewriter in 1955 enter a new century with an Allen Ginsberg Poetry Garden, where annually during National Poetry Month children recite their own compositions. There was a "Transatlantic Howl" employing major universities and the resources of the Web. But undoubtedly, the central event in "Howl's" anniversary year was the widely reviewed collection edited by one of many Ginsberg secretary/editors, Jason Shinder, The Poem That Changed America: "Howl" Fifty Years Later.

A portion of the great work.

HOWL

by Allen Ginsberg

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,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear,
burning their money in wastebaskets and listening
to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through
Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in
Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their
torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares,
alcohol and cock and endless balls,

It continues on the flip side.

Barack Obama did not raise your gas prices.
Barack Obama did not ship your job to Mexico.
Barack Obama did not write your sermons.
Barack Obama did not deny your habeas corpus.
Barack Obama did not cast your primary vote
and Barack Obama did not dismiss your primary vote.
Barack Obama did not raise your interest rates.

Happy dreams, everyone. Taking another breather on this late night bumpy primary ride to offer up a chance to share some more poetry, yours or someone else's. I'll kick it off with one of my favorite writers, Sharon Olds and one of my favorites of hers poems, "I Go Back to May 1937" from her collection, The Gold Cell.

I was chatting online today with a handsome scrabulous user and accidentally typed in a bit of a poem without even thinking about it (see it below).

As I reflected upon it, I realized that I'm having a great day today.  

Obama is in an inexorable ascendancy and almost has the nomination locked up.

The world has come to realize the fecklessness of the Clinton death march.

McCain proves, more and more each day, to be the kind of out-of-touch gaffemaster that Obama will love to face in the months to come.

So, yes, I am happy and having a great day.

Please enjoy my little bit of accidental poetry (it's not much to speak of but is very pithy).  Please try some of your own in the comments.  I want to collect some for an update for a recent post on my blog.

"Out with the old, in with the new.
    A generational shift, long overdue."

It is rare, but occasionally I am driven to bursts of poetry.  It has been a few years, but tonight, while killing time in a hotel room in Austin while on a business trip, thinking about all that has happened to our nation the last seven years and what this next election means... I was driven to write the following.  For me, writing poetry is a bit like sneezing... its an involuntary action that is over with quickly and I'm not usually happy with the results.  Nevertheless, here it is in its raw, unrevised form over the flip.  Feedback is always welcome.

I teach poetry. I write poetry. I organize and participate in poetry readings. Most everyone I've ever talked with has at least one favorite poem or poet. Let's clear our heads a little and turn to the literary. Please share a poem you like. I'll start us off with a piece by Kim Addonizio. Kim was born in D.C. in 1954 and now lives in Oakland, CA. Of "Chicken," she says: "Sometimes I look at jokes and riddles as a kind of poetry: alternate universes of compressed narratives and lyrics where one is in a state of uncertainty, mystery, and expectation. They're structured for surprise, the aha! of revelation or sudden laughter. Like the riddle of the lightbulb, the simple, familiar riddle of the chicken has generated its own literary tradition, responsive to culteral changes (Why did the punk rocker cross the road?) and further elaborations of meaning (Emerson: She didn't cross the road, she transcended it; Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated). The original, ur-chicken riddle has such an obvious answer that the answer fails to satisfy. Instead, it propels us into a deeper consideration of existential realities and of our inherently conflicted relationship to poultry. Why did she want to get to the other side? Is there a goal, a destination, a place to go? What about free-range chickens? Maybe this little riddle is a secular koan which could free us from our cages, from the maya of materiality."

Last week a diarist put up An Ode to Clinton's Narcissism. Setrak had the great idea that everyone should respond in poetry. I'm attempting to resurrect that idea. Here were my two entries into that thread:

Check out this poem called "She will Rise". it was written after the Potomac Primaries. it is a beautiful tribute to Hillary.

http://thedailyvoice.com/voice/2008/02/h illary-will-rise-000099.php