Notes Bibliography/ Abbreviations

Part 1, 'a lament for the Lamb in America: ' (NH, 416)

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,

(H,1-3, 3).

'I saw the greatest minds of my generation destroyed by madness.' In the first line of the poem Ginsberg is bearing witness to what might be termed a 'psychic attack' on the inner life of many of his generation that produces their 'madness' - one of the major themes in Howl. As part one expands outwards in its long, flowing lines, described by the poet as his 'Hebraic-Melvillian bardic breath,' (NH, 415) it will attempt to encompass, in a gesture of 'solidarity,' many scattered and isolated individuals and groups across America who, by their individual lifestyles and existence, can be seen as opposed to, and dominated by, the conservative status quo. Gary Snyder has said, in lines that succinctly express the poetic heart of Howl in their linkage of politics and alienated spiritualities: 'In the spiritual and political loneliness of America of the fifties you'd hitch a thousand miles to meet a friend.' (D, 23.) These 'isolatoes' are the ones identified by Ginsberg as 'starving hysterical naked.' 'Starving:' for a new sustenance in an increasingly materialistic society where the older forms of protest had become discredited. 'Hysterical:' because they have been driven to extremes of mental behaviour by the society they inhabit, (and their discourses will, therefore, display a resultant extremity of expression that will be be radically (hysterically) opposed to the bland conventions of the day). 'Naked:' because they have attempted, or are attempting, to rid themselves of the excess cultural and spiritual baggage of their society. In this sense, 'naked' equals a search for honesty deep inside the individual. Ginsberg is expressing a poetic solidarity that takes in the outlaws of America. A political act that has to be seen as such in the climate of its writing, when lifestyle and sexuality, especially in the homosexual underground, could be seen as 'political.' Thus, those addicts who are 'dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,' are existing in the only space allowed them: ' the negro streets' of Harlem, and the African-American underclass. As dawn approaches, they are 'dragging,' counterposed to the bustling rhythms of the day that belongs to straight white America, the world of work, Wall Street and Madison Avenue, and academic conservatism.

Significantly, they are seeking out drugs. Ginsberg is specifically eschewing any moral judgement here, while at the same time exposing the bleak reality of addiction - in this case, a reference to Herbert Huncke. (1.) And one notes that this is 'an angry fix,' with heroin addiction being converted into an antisocial individual defiance, a political issue of lifestyle, not the traditional passive immolation of heroin. (A somewhat dubious point in an isolated context, but one that is overcome, arguably, by the overall wild, inclusive sweep of the poem).

Who are these night people? 'Angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient connection to the starry dynamos in the machinery of night.' This striking word-crammed passage again contrasts the 'night' of the rebel to the day of the dominant, and emphasises the urgent spiritual yearnings of Ginsberg's 'hipsters.' This is a 'burning' compulsion for a linkage with older and buried beliefs: 'the ancient connection,' and cosmic movements 'the starry dynamos in the machinery of night.' The religious need is expressed through the language of the mechanical and the modern which produces a striking interfusion and juxtaposition of words to express this yearning. As Charles Bernstein says: 'Howl makes it apparent that something has gone wrong with America by the 1950s...' (2.)

As Part I expands further outwards, it makes certain explicitly political points about the nature of American cultural life, couched in a spiritually polemical language.

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,

(H, 6-7, 3.)

In these lines, the attack is narrowed down onto the academic system that is seen as implicated in the wider 'military-industrial complex,' the collective 'scholars of war.' Ginsberg's annotations to Howl clearly identify his target:

'During [the] author's residence, 1944-48, Columbia scientists helped split atoms for military power in secrecy. Subsequent military-industrial funding increasingly dominated university research... That cold war influence darkened the complexion of scientific studies and humanistic attitudes.' (H, 125)

Those 'who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes' see further than the limiting textual world of, say, the New Criticism, which can be seen as a representative of the 'humanistic attitudes' contaminated by the 'cold war influence.' They are 'hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy,' a linkage between the mystical vision of a wider America typified by 'Arkansas,' beyond the Eastern academic establishment, and a rebel poetic tradition with William Blake as one of its chief avatars. They see a 'Blake-light tragedy,' the light of a mysticism that Blake exemplifies, that lights the 'tragedy' of existence. This is a re-iteration of the passionate, individual vision, set against the official wisdoms, a privileging of, and a grounding in, a different line of rebellious descent. And such an individual will not last long in such a stifling environment: 'who were expelled from the academies for crazy,' i.e. for being unrestrained in their desires and the expression of them: 'publishing/obscene odes on the windows of the skull.' The juxtaposition of 'obscene' and 'odes' is interesting here - the new poets are struggling to write a verse that is unlimited by the prevailing academic orthodoxy, which Ginsberg sees as an expression of the wider political conformity of the cold war. This rawly honest-'obscene' - poetry will expand the traditional association of 'ode,' to illuminate the mind through 'the windows of the skull.'

>

This first part of Howl criss-crosses the country in a rapid-fire textual journey. From Harlem/New York City, to 'Canada & Paterson' (H,12, 3) back to 'Brooklyn', (H, 13,3) 'Battery to holy Bronx,' (H, 14, 3) 'Zen New Jersey... Atlantic City Hall,' (H, 20, 3) 'Newark,' (H, 21, 3) onwards again to 'Kansas,'(H, 24, 4) 'Idaho,' (H, 25, 4) 'Baltimore,' (H, 26, 4) 'Oklahoma,' (H, 27, 4) 'Houston,' (H, 28, 4) 'Mexico' (29, 4) and across to 'the West Coast,' (H, 30, 4) the poem reads geographically like a wild ride through the American night, with Neal Cassady ('N.C., secret hero of these poems') (H, 43, 4) at the wheel. This encompassing textual voyage acts to bind the isolated together in a gesture of solidarity, and also captures, at a point in the mid-Fifties when conservatism was the dominant order of the day, many of the individual potential/immanent energies for change in America. From the anonymous outlaws of the American night to close friends, (such as the afore-mentioned Cassady, and oblique references to Burroughs and Kerouac, for example), Ginsberg is bearing witness to the alienation of his generation, and attempting to set up a field of dissident spiritual energy. (3.)

'Part II names the monster of mental consciousness that preys on the Lamb...' (NH, 416)

In part two, the poem takes its attack to American Capitalism, called by the ancient biblical name of 'Moloch:' '"Moloch": or Molech, the Canaanite fire god, whose worship was marked by parent's burning their children as propitiary sacrifice.' (4.) Here, Ginsberg is again linking the ancient to the modern, technological state:

'What sphinx of cement and aluminium bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imaginations?

Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!

Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!

Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jaihouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgement! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!'

(H, 79-82, 6,).

These verses do not just refer to the state's physical control, as in: 'Boys sobbing in armies,' which is a reference to the '[p]ost-war U.S.A. reinstitution of [the] peacetime draft, 1948, (H, 139) but extend Ginsberg's critique of the more oblique control of the minds of the people. In the first line, the physical brutality of the monstrous 'sphinx of cement and aliminium' who 'bashed open their skulls' is linked to the image of mental control: 'ate up their brains and imaginations.' The state - 'Moloch' - is rapaciously eager to devour its young, body and soul. This is the true 'Nightmare of Moloch,' the 'Mental Moloch' which can reach out into people's minds as well control their bodies through such apparatus as the legal system: 'Moloch the heavy judger of men.' These words strongly imply that little mercy will be forthcoming from a 'heavy judger,' and suggest the crushing 'heavy' weight of the dominant power structure. This state apparatus is figured further as an 'incomprehensible prison'; in other words, citizens are prisoners of a state whose power they cannot fully apprehend due to its 'incomprehensible' complexity. This line goes on to present a powerful composite image of the state's judiciary and legislature, (via a reference to Lynd Ward's striking visual imagery in 'God's Man'): 'Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows!' (5.)

The context of all-intrusiveness - and a troubling personal involvement with the state power - is emphasised by such lines as 'Moloch who entered my soul early' (H, 85, 6), for example, which gives a sense of life-long, inescapable, mental domination. Or 'Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy,' (H, 85, 6). A double assault in Ginsberg's case: he has been 'frightened... out' of realising his human potential, his 'natural ecstasy,' both as an individual and as a homosexual: '... Ginsberg was in a position to know very well how oppressive a society could be if one did not conform to accepted patterns of behaviour.' (F, 86). By accepting that fearful dominance, by not resisting, one is complicit with the system, one's individual fear feeding its power over the many: '... Moloch gains its power not because it lives beyond human will but because we willingly, if blindly, participate in its authority.' (D,82)

'Part III a litany of affirmation of the Lamb in its glory...'
>

Part III of Howl was, in the poem's original conception, written at the same time as Part I. In keeping with the spontaneous nature of its composition, which the rewriting has retained, arguably, to a remarkable degree, the role of the poem's addressee rose organically out of the act of composition:

< 'He quickly found that the theme he kept returning to was the story of Carl Solomon... Recognizing that the poem was about Carl, he began a second section, specifically addressed to him... ' (M,190)

By concentrating on the concrete plight of Solomon, Ginsberg can attack the system from a different angle. This is the wing of the State that deals specifically with mind-control: issues of sanity and madness, normality and abnormality:

'I'm with you in Rockland

where you scream in a straitjacket that you're losing the game of the actual

> pingpong of the abyss

I'm with you in Rockland

where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul is innocent and immortal it

should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse

'I'm with you in Rockland

where fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from its

pilgrimage to a cross in the void'

(H, III, 104-106)

The linking of inner and outer oppression is continued in these powerful and striking lines: the physical restraints of the mental hospital and the terror they produce 'where you scream in a straitjacket' is combined with the existential and the spiritual, (in a darkly humourous manner). Solomon is described as 'losing the game of the actual/pingpong of the abyss,' the humour of 'actual pingpong' contrasted to the mystery and fearfulness 'of the abyss.' This is re-inforced in the next line, where Ginsberg explicitly refers to the stark reality of the 'armed madhouse,' standing, one assumes, as yet another metonym for the state. (And an anticipation of Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?) Solomon's despair is seen as a mute inability to express the spiritual truths of the individual, that 'the soul is immortal it should never die ungodly' in these surroundings; to 'bang on a catatonic piano' conjures an image of a possible recreational facility, the 'piano' appropriated to stand as a medium for communication which is blocked. In the language of psychological terminology, resonating with the context of this section, the piano is 'catatonic,' incapable of sending sound into the world.

The sundering of mind and body is further rendered by the reference to the barbarity of electric-shock treatment. Solomon, subjected to 'fifty more shocks,' is described as having his very being bifurcated: '[your soul] will never return... to its body again.' The combination of technology (electricity) and psychological control by an arm of the state (the armed madhouse) has condemned his 'soul' to a 'pilgrimage' that has left it crucified in some hellish limbo 'a cross in the void.'

Yet the tone of this section changes subtly as Ginsberg's 'solidarity' describes Solomon's defiance: '... you accuse your doctors of insanity and plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the fascist national Golgotha.' (H, 107) Who is really insane here? The patient, or the doctors who impose a stifling and barbaric 'normality' on their patients, which acts as a metonym for the wider conformity of 'Truman's and Eisenhower's America' ? The amusing and romantic image of 'the Hebrew socialist revolution' is followed by another explicitly political reference to the 'fascist national Golgotha.' Extreme language, carried off, arguably, by Ginsberg's wit, and the rolling power of his verse. One notes again the mingling of the political with the spiritual; the 'fascist national' state is combines with 'Golgotha,' the Place of Skulls, a resonation, not just of New Testament Christianity, but of the Old Testament image of 'Moloch.'

The penultimate line of the poem is a textual liberation and affirmation, Solomon and Ginsberg joined: 'when we wake up electrified out of our coma.' (H 111,8) (My italics). Wakened by a spiritual electricity that combats the nullifying force of electric-shock treatment - 'electrified out of' - produced by 'our souls airplanes roaring over the roof they've come to drop angelic bombs.' (H111, 8) Ginsberg invokes a spiritual war through the juxtaposition of 'souls' with 'airplanes,' and 'angelic' with 'bombs,' culminating in the humour of: 'O victory forget your underwear we're free.' (H 111, 8) The section ends on a dream of solidarity and unity, occurring, 'in the Western night.' Night here can be seen as some ending of the project of 'Western'/American civilisation - that has produced the state of 'Moloch.' It is also a resonation with the image of night as the outlaw space of America throughout the poem - and, possibly, a compounded geographic/mythic image. Ginsberg is on the West Coast, the furthest frontier, which seems to offer a new beginning, grounded in the old hopes, for the new outlaws of America.

'Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!Holy!Holy!Holy!Holy!Holy!Holy!Holy!Holy!Holy!Holy! Holy! (H, 113, 8)

The Footnote, (6.) is a recapitulation and affirmation of the spiritual, a positive response to the negativity of Part II, commencing on fifteen repeated 'Holy!s' and moving in the next line to link the general 'The world is holy!' to the individual: 'The soul is holy!' to the body 'The skin is holy!' Although '[h]e didn't discover Whitman until later, surprisingly,' (F, 101) an 'ecstatic democracy' of body and soul is envisaged in this section that bears a striking resemblance to the earlier poet. Such lines as: 'The bum's as holy as the seraphim,' further define an inclusory equality within the then-contemporary 'beat ethic' (7.)of combined spirituality and compassion for the 'down and outs' and outlaws of society, that again contains echoes of Whitman. But the poem is never a political manifesto in the traditional sense, being too gloriously untidy - too human? - in its sprawling lines, that frequently struggle to hold together the epistemic chaos that is being howled out at the world. This last section rams home the message: that Ginsberg's political views are always heavily inflected with the author's mysticism.

FORM I: 'I hear ghostly Academics in Limbo screeching about form.' (NH, 415).

'I thought I wouldn't write a poem, but just write what I wanted to without fear... something I wouldn't be able to show to anybody... ' (NH 415) In exorcising the 'fear' by these private writings, Ginsberg managed to encapsulate a moment in American history - and expand the American poetic form. The long, flowing lines can be seen as a formalistic necessity, a response to the content, with so much despair and hope and fear and rage welling up from inside the poet that it defines the shape of the finished work. He had created a new form, although one that had many antecedents: 'William Blake... ChristopherSmart, the French Surrealists... Herman Melville, Celine... Kerouac and Burroughs...' (8.) to name but a few of those who constitute 'the complex matrix of literary influence' (9.) on Ginsberg's poetry.

Using the poet's logic, as expressed in Howl, to attack the poetics of the 'scholars of war' is, in itself, a formal political gesture and an attack on the institutions that they are linked to metonymically. If they represent 'sanity,' as expressed by the tight formal considerations of the day, the long-lined surging form of Howl will represent madness as liberation: 'Madness in "Howl" is a sign of salvation... intended to exorcise the calmly measured, repressed America that "Howl" attacks.' (F, 103) As Ginsberg, states: 'A lot of these forms developed out of an extreme rhapsodic wail that I once heard in the madhouse.' (NH, 416). This 'extreme rhapsodic wail' represents a poetics of the voice and the body in extremis, the 'breath measure' of projective verse jacked up to produce a 'howl' ripped out of the body -a physical breath at the extremes of pitch and voice. Such lines as 'Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!' (H, 86, 6) display this despair and a tone of almost self-loathing. They also show how he uses a shorter line in Part II, enclosed (uneasily?) within the longer unit, but separated by the exclamation marks that chop the rhythm up. This gives the section a frantic, dissonant edge that mirrors its subject - the ugly domination of Moloch - and a change of rhythmic pace which gives the overall form of the poem more variety. This choppy rhythm is echoed in parts of the Footnote: 'Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! etc.' (H, 126, 8) for example, yet here the tone is ecstatic rather than despairing - an interesting rhythmic twist, as Ginsberg ends his poem on a note of mystical triumph.

FORM II: HYDROGEN JUKEBOX:

'According to Ginsberg, Cezanne's ability to juxtapose two dissimilar images (or perspectives) creates a third image that partakes of the two but that is freed from the here and now... In "Howl" this practice can be seen in the word clusters that make up Ginsberg's catalogues...' (D, 78.)

Ginsberg's 'juxtapositions' of images which he uses throughout the poem, act to shatter conventional linguistic sense, forcing the reader to acquire new methods of reading. The famous image 'hydrogen jukebox' (H,15, 3) is an example of this 'juxtapositional' process, with the nuclear nightmare image of the Atomic bomb signalled by 'hydrogen,' coupled to the seemingly benign image of the 'jukebox' in the bars frequented by Ginsberg and his friends. Seemingly benign - but the outlaw musics of jazz, and r&b which one assumes were often played on these jukeboxes were also dependent to some extent upon the wider entertainment industry, part of capitalist America - 'Moloch' - for recording and distribution. Thus, even the music is 'contaminated,' as the world had been contaminated by the invisible 'fallout' from nuclear testing. Producing the 'crack of doom?' And the jukebox itself is a product of technology, which can be linked to capitalist production, the military/industrial complex, and finally to the 'bomb' that is the last line of defence - and attack - for that system. The poem itself is equally contaminated, by the internalised unconscious discourses of 'Moloch.' His juxtapositions, in this sense, lay bare the 'contaminations' of 'Moloch,' while trying to howl their way free of them - Are thus, political gestures at the most basic level of the poem, an attempt to write and speak a language that can make some sense, however difficult, of the society that Ginsberg sees as oppressive. This 'third image' produced by 'juxtaposition' is a powerful, mysterious expression of resistance to a 'contaminated' language - and still defies any interpretation that is too easily reductive.

>

Further, these 'juxtapositions' can be seen as the result of a mystical stance towards politics because of the spontaneous method of their composition, reaching deep into the subconscious to make connections beyond the 'lyrical and ideological interference of the ego,' to misquote and expand Olson's original line. (10.) An impossible gesture, perhaps. But this mystical/individualistic approach to politics, at a time of distrust in the old, discredited struggles of the Left, produced a language which, while being intensely political and partisan in its anguished (and often humourous) 'Howl' of rage, eschews the one-dimensional sloganeering that would, perhaps, have been expected from a purely 'political' position in the old sense. For which he received the vindication he deserved by the public response that the poem received - both from the ineffective attempts by the State to ban it and its success with those who identified with it, in the aftermath of the famous Six Gallery reading. (11.)

IT MAKES SENSE...

In conclusion, I offer my favourite anecdote about Howl:

'[Ginsberg] gave a copy of Howl to Thelonius Monk, (12.) and a week later ran into him standing outside the Five Spot. he asked him if he had read it.

"Yeah, I'm almost through," said Monk.

"Well?" asked Allen.

"It makes sense," replied Monk.

(B, 140)

To re-quote Monk's terse comments: 'It makes sense' to this reader to approach Howl (and Ginsberg) as an expression of 'a mysticism which is intensely political.' I would argue that its howl of rage and protest and solidarity with the outlaws of the post-war American state acts to fuse form and content in such a way as almost to nullify any readings that attempt to ignore the spiritual/political motor that drives the poem.




Back to Top

Notes Bibliography/ Abbreviations

links poetry essays more...