When “Howl” was printed by a British book publisher in 1955, copies were seized as “pornography” by Customs officials. In the poem, Ginsberg writes graphically about heterosexual and homosexual sex and about the use of illegal drugs - forbidden subjects in the uptight society of the 1950s. But it had a rocky start in printed form. “Howl” was instantly revered by the Beat crowd and eventually gained worldwide fame. In the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floatingĪcross the tops of cities contemplating jazz." Who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking To the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,ĭragging themselves through the negro streets at dawnĪngelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection The beginning of the long run-on sentence that makes up the first part of the poem is the most quoted bit: “Howl” was a stylistically wild, groundbreaking poem that quickly became both famous and infamous. “Alvah Goldbook” was Kerouac’s humorous alias for the Ginsberg and “Wail” was the fictitious name he gave to Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” - which Ginsberg first read in public that October night. And I was the one who got things jumping by going around collecting dimes and quarters from the rather stiff audience standing around in the gallery and coming back with three huge gallon jugs of California Burgundy and getting them all piffed so that by eleven o'clock when Alvah Goldbook was reading his, wailing his poem ‘Wail’ drunk with arms outspread everybody was yelling ‘Go! Go! Go!’ (like a jam session).”
In his novel, The Dharma Bums(published in 1958), Kerouac called it “the birth of the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance.” He then described this memorable scene: So were local Beat celebrities Gary Snyder, Phil Lamantia, Michael McClure and a then virtually unknown poet named Allen Ginsberg. Three years after Jack Kerouac coined the term “The Beat Generation” a group of Beat poets gathered at the Six Gallery on Fillmore Street in San Francisco for a poetry reading.
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