Howl, and Other Poems

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked

Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a flower?

who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup

Hold back the edges of your gowns, Ladies, we are going through hell.

William Carlos Williams

We are blind and live our blind lives out in blindness.

It is the poet, Allen Ginsberg, who has gone, in his own body, through the horrifying experiences described from life in these pages. The wonder of the thing is not that he has survived but that he, from the very depths, has found a fellow whom he can love, a love he celebrates without looking aside in these poems. Say what you will, he proves to us, in spite of the most debasing experiences that life can offer a man, the spirit of love survives to ennoble our lives if we have the wit and the courage and the faith—and the art! to persist.

It is a howl of defeat. Not defeat at all for he has gone through defeat as if it were an ordinary experience, a trivial experience. Everyone in this life is defeated but a man, if he be a man, is not defeated.

He was always on the point of 'going away', where it didn't seem to matter; he disturbed me, I never thought he'd live to grow up and write a book of poems. His ability to survive, travel, and go on writing astonishes me. That he has gone on developing and perfecting his art is no less amazing to me.

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?

So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck it at my side like a scepter