Howl, and Other Poems

Ginsberg's celebrated 1956 poem brought the writing of the Beat Generation to widespread attention. In the words of a critic who was there, when Ginsberg read Howl aloud for the first time at the Six Gallery in San Francisco in October of 1955, the audience knew at the deepest level that a barrier had been broken, that a human voice and body had been hurled against the harsh wall of America. After the reading, budding publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti sent a telegram to Ginsberg that exactly echoed the letter Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote to Ginsberg's hero Walt Whitman when Whitman published the first edition of his LEAVES OF GRASS. Ferlinghetti's telegram read, I greet you at the beginning of a great career. When do I get the manuscript? He got it, and in spite of a protracted obscenity trial, got the poem published. It went on to be translated into more than 20 languages and become one of the signature poems of 20th-century American poetry. Copyright (C) Muze Inc. 2005. For personal use only. All rights reserved.