alan Ginsburg starts his three part phenomenal poem, with a dedication For Carl Solomon. alan Ginsburg who was in a mental institution as an alternative to jail met carl solomon there, who was at the time, receiving shock therapy and going through excruciating conditions.
the two became friends and bonded on their love of literature and hatred towards the establishment and common fears and loss.
Ginsburg, though speaking to solomon in some of the poe howl, I think didnot direct it all to solomon.
first, I am not going to analyze the poem because I think poems shouldn't be analyzed and even if they should they surely shouldn't be by someone like me.
and so this is merely an impression of this poem made me feel:
it started off by describing, in hyperboled mania the terrifying human condition of those driven by madness and mania and it didn't seem like he spoke of them as mad men, but merely as men.
"who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or
purgatoried their torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and
endless balls"
"who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before
the machinery of other skeletons"
"who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside
of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next
decade"
in explicit details and extremely unique and grasping style Ginsburg painted a portrit of the gutters of society, the voyage of everyday life, giving a voice to his own terrifying experiences, and how ones own mind, own people, could drive them to utter, incontrolable chaos.
and carl, much like him, much like everyone of equivalent uniqueness and slight difference, had to go through utter hell.
Ginsburg was a homosexual liberal in the 50s who wanted to experience life and instead had to be in hiding, could only be released for the mental institution if he were 'not be gay anymore' carl was an extremely (like Ginsburg) sensitive, intelectual radically thinking writer, both absolute misfits of society had t succumb to the feelings described in this poem, to 'howl' as Ginsburg pointed "who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waiving genitals and manuscripts"as a cry of injustice.
at the end of the poem, which was my personal favorite part, due to its overruling melancholia and sorrow, immensely well put metaphors and smilies, visual language that forces you into the situation, Ginsburg adresses carl about rockland, the mental institution where they both were:
"ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you're really in the
total animal soup of time--"
"Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland
where you're madder than I am
I'm with you in Rockland
where you must feel very strange
I'm with you in Rockland
where you imitate the shade of my mother"
"I'm with you in Rockland
where we hug and kiss the United States under
our bedsheets the United States that coughs all
I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls col-
lapse O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're
free night and won't let us sleep "
howl was, and is one of the greatest poems of the 20th century and has been compared to walt whitman's field of grass.
I personally saw a great resemblance to the wasteland, in its spot on, grim description of darker times, in a long avant guard pattern that kept people, years and ears later, wondering about the meaning behind the genius;s masterpiece.
