Great Poets Howl: A Study of Allen Ginsberg's Poetry, 1943-1955

by Glen Burns

Allen Ginsberg's Howl is a seminal document for the post-modernisms exfoliating out of World War II – much like T.S. Eliot's Waste Land for modernism. This study traces his formative development in time/space during years 1943 till mid-50s Howl breakthru of individual voice. (A concluding chapter sketches subsequent development up to Plutonium Ode 1978). Close-reading of individual poems is set within the context of biography and cultural politics showing growth of Ginsberg's poetics as adapted from William Carlos Williams' visions of ordinary mind, Whitman's expansiveness and comradeship, and Blake's politics of desire. As «revolt of sudras (untouchables) poet,» Ginsberg has concentrated language on marginal mankind so that poetic praxis folds into a dimension of visionary politics and poem becomes prophetic moment voiced against the paranoia of state terrorism. Howl is a key event in the struggle for freedom.

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First published December 31, 1983