Beat Generation Essay Research Paper The Howl

Beat Generation Essay, Research Paper

The Howl of a Generation

The “Beat Movement” in modern literature has become an important period

in the history of literature and society in America. Incorporating

influences such as jazz, art, literature, philosophy, and religion, the

Beat writers created a new and prophetic vision of modern life and

changed the way an entire generation of people see the world. That

generation is now aging and its representative voices are becoming lost

to eternity, but the message is alive and well. The Beats have forever

altered the nature of American consciousness.

The impact of the Beats would certainly not have been as universal or

influential if not for the writing of one poem; “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.(1-3)

These lines, perhaps the most well known in 20th century poetry, serve

as a thematic statement for a poem that offers a new way of thinking, a

sense of hope of escape from the “Molochs” of society. The story of the

poem.s history serves well as an account of the birth of the Beat

Generation. Ginsberg.s life leading up to the writing of “Howl,” the

actual creation of the poem, its legendary first reading, and the

aftermath of its public debut all figure prominently into the history of

the literary movement. One can understand the impact of the poem on the

Beat Generation by studying not only the chronology of its past, but its

intricate and unique structure as well as its themes and ultimate

message. Following is an examination of the poem as the great

expression of Beat defiance, beginning with a short history of the poem.

Ginsberg.s Beat career began at Columbia University in 1943 where he

met Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassidy and others. This

group of writers would remain life-long friends of Ginsberg and

influence him in myriad ways. The history of “Howl,” however, begins in

1953 after Ginsberg.s move to San Francisco in search of poetic

inspiration. Having moved away from the camaraderie of his group of New

York friends, Ginsberg began to feel dislocated and depressed. Ginsberg

knew he was at a crossroads in his art between his apprenticeship to

academic models of literature (mentor William Carlos Williams

specifically), and breaking through to a personal voice which could sing

of experience beyond the bounds of what was permissible . by 50.s

academic standards . to speak of in poetry.

Battling writer.s block, Ginsberg decided to enroll in graduate school

at U.C. Berkeley, moved to North Beach, and moved in with a friend of

Kerouac.s. It was in these surroundings that he came to be part of poet

Kenneth Rexroth.s Friday night poetry circle. The Rexroth circle:

well-read and international, homosexual and heterosexual, poets and

artists from several generations, laid the foundation for the Beat

breakthrough.

Ginsberg slowly became more comfortable with his new surroundings,

encouraged by his new companion, Peter Orlovsky. He still, however, was

becoming more and more depressed, attempting to deal with his repressed

homosexuality. Ginsberg consulted a psychiatrist and asked him if he

should be trying to be heterosexual. When the doctor asked Ginsberg

what he really wanted to do, the poet replied, “I really would just love

to get an apartment, stop working and live with Peter and write poems.”

To which the doctor replied, “why don.t you.” (Schumacher 147).

Ginsberg felt he had received a blessing. He arranged his own layoff

at the market-research firm where he had been working by replacing

himself with a computer, ensuring himself unemployment benefits for six

months. He and Orlovsky moved into an apartment together and Ginsberg

began writing. In July of 1955, Ginsberg wrote a line in his journal,

“I saw the best mind angel-headed hipster damned,” thinking of his

friend Carl Solomon. A week or so later, Ginsberg sat down in his

apartment to release some poetic energy into his typewriter.

I sat idly at my desk by the first floor window facing Montgomery

street.s slope to gay Broadway . only a few blocks from City Lights

literary paperback bookshop. I had a secondhand typewriter, some cheap

scratch paper. I began typing, not with the idea of writing a formal

poem, but stating my imaginative sympathies, whatever they were worth.

As my loves were impractical and my thoughts relatively unworldly, I had

nothing to gain, only the pleasure of enjoying on paper those sympathies

most intimate to myself and most awkward in the great world of family,

formal edu

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