“America, why are your libraries full of tears?”

Howl is about life. It is an epic, stretching poem illustrating America in the 1950’s from the perspective of the freaks. Or the Beats.

In a generation characterized by ready-made washer machines to buy for mass produced button down pink shirts, the Beatniks were the heartbeat of underground America. It was an erratic, racing heartbeat though, sped and slowed by drugs, poetry and jazz, and these poems were written by poet Allen Ginsberg.

Some of the poems are an homage, A Supermarket in California’s sexuality is inspired by Walt Whitman’s poetry. America is about Ginsberg’s leftist roots, including important labor movement figures in America and his childhood experiences with a Russian heritage and attending Communist Party meetings. A sunflower is seen as a metaphor for human’s, that we are all interconnected, in Sunflower Sutra. The poem Transcriptions of Organ Music is about openness, as Ginsberg moves into a partially empty cottage.

The Six Gallery was an art and poetry gathering place in San Francisco. On October 7, 1955, a famous poetry reading occurred there.  Most notably Howl was read, but other poets Gary Synder and Micheal McClure read their poetry as well. It was significant also in being one of the first public events of the Beat Generation, and developing the literary Beat culture.

Ginsberg was approached by the publishing company City Lights to have Howl published following the Six Gallery reading. This led to the obscenity trial of the book in 1957, for illicit drug and taboo sexual practices referred to in the published work. Literary experts and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) helped in the trial for the book to be deemed not obscene, because it has “redeeming social importance”, according to Judge W.J. Clayton Horn’s ruling.

Ginsberg saw the best minds of his generation destroyed by madness, and gave birth to the next in his influence. The 1960’s counterculture and its leaders, like musicians Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison wrote poetry through lyrics confronting their generation’s issues: war, civil rights and poverty.

Sometimes  the most shocking literature and other art forms are most necessary for a society. Whether deemed obscene or not, people have free will to make their own choices and can further base that off the words and actions of others. Howl, though bold, shows life for how it is: ugly and beautiful. What we take from that is up to us.