Howl

Allen Ginsberg was six years-old when his mother was committed to an insane asylum. He was 18 and a student at Columbia when he met Jack Kerouac. He was expelled from the university the next year and joined the Merchant Marine. In 1948 he was back in New York, sitting in his Harlem apartment, when he had a vision of the poet Blake. He described it as "a sense of cosmic consciousness, vibrations, understanding, awe, and wonder and surprise." But writing poetry didn't pay the rent, so he got a ...