Howl, poem in three sections by Allen Ginsberg, first published in Howl and Other Poems in 1956. The poem was praised for its incantatory rhythms and raw emotion, and it is considered the foremost poetic expression of the Beat generation of the 1950s.
Allen Ginsberg, American poet whose epic poem Howl (1956) is considered to be one of the most significant products of the Beat movement. The work owes something to the romantic bohemianism of Walt Whitman, and it also dwells on homosexuality, drug addiction, and Buddhism, among other topics.
Read “A Footnote to 'Howl” here. Copyright Credit: Allen Ginsberg, “Howl” from Collected Poems, 1947-1980. Copyright © 1984 by Allen Ginsberg. Used with the permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Ginsberg began work on "Howl" in autumn of 1954. He performed the poem at the Six Gallery reading in San Francisco in October 1955. Fellow poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Books, who attended the performance, published the work in 1956.
"Howl" celebrates people living at the margins of society, especially those whose sexuality, politics, spiritual beliefs, and/or mental health status placed them far outside mainstream American culture in the mid-20th century.
Howl, Parts I & II - I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked
Howl, Parts I & II - Poems | Academy of American Poets
'Howl' is Allen Ginsberg's best-known poem and is commonly considered his greatest work. It is an indictment of modern society.
Allen Ginsberg wrote “Howl,” his landmark 1956 poem, shortly after moving from New York City to San Francisco. Ginsberg had left New York after being released from eight months of incarceration in a psychiatric ward.