I Have Seen The Greatest Minds...Howl

Howl. Where to start? Line one I suppose...

Is it giving Ginsberg too much credit to say that his opening line is perhaps the most important and known opening line in the history of American poetics? "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix."

Despite notoriety or not, the line is a familiar one. But what the hell is the underbelly of Howl? It is a poem in the form of a brick of prose, a long, three part laundry list of things Ginsberg has seen happen to the "greatest minds of a generation." Is that all? Sure. People often try too hard to look inside a poem's lines and miss that sometimes, at least in the case of Howl, a poem damn well can be a list.

Take part 3: "I'm with you in Rockwell," is repeated over and over, just a list of the different ways he (and the poem) are reaching out to Carl Soloman locked up in the loony bin.

"...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" writes Ginsberg in part 1. I particularly love this line; it does such a good job typifying the naivety of the Beatniks. Of course, to a generation confused and disillusioned after a decade of war, time would be an abstract menace. And this pursuit of Eternity that Ginsberg hints at, a large part of the "Junky"-esque pursuit of that "final fix."

It is, however, a fruitless pursuit.

Again though, they will attempt. "...who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity" and yet, it is sadly implied, that Eternity is never found.

Howl is an exploration of this disillusion. Simply put. It, at times, is difficult to struggle through because of how dense the scholarly Ginsberg dumps so much raw emotion onto readers.

It is almost, as if, Allen is on top of a soap box shouting; and if you've heard him reading it, you'll agree with me.

Here we see James Franco's interpretation of the man, reading the final part of the poem. He accurately captures the energy, sporadic inflection, and even the nasally voice.

I wonder what the atmosphere was like in San Francisco when the poem was first read at that famous reading. I can't help but think that some of the poem was written specifically for them, for that time. All 'wish I could have been there' feelings aside, I do know that the poem has stood the test of time (and obscenity!).

It is a raving, great mind howling out into a disillusioned, dark night. After all, it is our closest look at the generation outside of On the Road.