Allen Ginsberg: "Howl" (1956)
Agenda for analysis:
Lyric personae: “I” and “my generation”
Omniscient/prophetic point of view
3rd person lyric personae - individuals and groups
Specific second person addressee: Carl Solomon
Moloch
Stylistics/Diction: Metaphor, some Biblical
Direct address/apostrophe
Repetition structures
Exclamation and declamation
Curses and blessings
Stream of consciousness
The long line (Whitman, the Torah)
Thematics: Violence and destruction
Madness
Quest for connection
Institutions
Drugs
Travel and exile
Themes: The individual vs. the system
Apocalypse
Struggle between old and new
Questing/finding
Generations
Identity/community
Holiness
Genre/form: Long poem
Unrhymed poetryIncantation; rhythmic chant
Manifesto
Contexts: Generationality
Autobiography/confession/coterie
Biblical (Jewish) intertextuality
Rallying point for identity
Cult status of Ginsberg as prophet
Ideas for essays:
Allen Ginsberg: “Howl” (1956)
Describe the speaker of the poem. How is the speaker’s position in relation to the people, states of mind and places he speaks about? In relation to the reader?
What is the effect of Ginsberg’s lyric style?
[Words to characterize it: enthusiastic, declamatory, Whitmanesque, Blakean, Biblical/Old Testament/rabbinical, celebratory, long lined, filled with unusual compounds and predicates, f. ex.: “the negro streets at dawn”; “angelheaded hipsters”, “hydrogen jukebox” etc.]
Find and analyse more unusual examples of micro-level stylistics.
Consider Ginsberg’s sense of flow and direct address.
Consider the poem's use of location and its techniques of depicting motion.
Consider the themes of madness and youth and their linkage with (sub)cultural activity in the poem.