2008 Woodie Awards
The Officious Ombudsman: Enter the "Howl Again Poetry Contest" today!
A Celebration of Allen Ginsberg's Poem Howl
Issac Stolzenbach
Issue date: 10/14/05 Section: Opinions
|
Arguably, that accolade goes to Allen Ginsberg's reading of his poem Howl the night of October 6, 1955 at the Six Gallery on Fillmore Street in San Francisco, which for some marked the birth of the Beat Generation.
The Beats brought about a revolution of sorts, where "the few" influenced "the many" rather than the many influencing the few (like pop culture is today). This small group of intellectuals fought for civil rights (viz. equality, freedom of religion, gay rights) through literature, poetry, music, and philosophy. They became the seminal influence on the Baby Boomer's counter-culture movement in the '60s. Generation X and the Millennials are comparable in size to the Beats and Boomers respectively. Before history has the chance to repeat itself, we must answer one salient question: What example/philosophy is Generation X providing to the Millennials, if any? The world is ripe for change, but can mere words shake our foundations anymore?
Would we even notice? Even if the message hit us square between the eyes? Ginsberg had an enlightened sense of social consciousness, like a sadist surgeon he spread the pulp to expose a nerve, swollen from decades of dichotomy, and stitched in a graft of social change that grew into the sixties, "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked . . . angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night." Jack Kerouac, author of On the Road (another sacred Beat text), was present for this first reading, cheering a teary-eyed Ginsberg on, "Yes! That's right! Go!"
After that fateful night, Ginsberg received a telegram from Lawrence Ferlinghetti, owner of City Lights bookstore. The message contained Ginsberg's future: "I greet you at the beginning of a great career." Two years later, his book Howl and Other Poems was confiscated and labeled as obscene; then Ferlinghetti was arrested for "publishing and selling obscene material" when he published and sold a second printing. The American Civil Liberties Union contested the seizure, the Red Scare stomped and the media frenzy ensued, but eventually censorship lost and now Howl stands testament to the power of free speech.
Fifty years ago, when Howl was written, America suffered from the repetitive pangs of transparent omnipresent enemies lurking everywhere behind evil red mushroom-clouds with hammer and sickle in hands of fear and suspicion. As the beast, the Red Scare, trounced through shattered lives and careers in Hollywood, Sen. Joseph McCarthy cheered it on . . . feeding it peanuts and nuclear families as the beast lumbered on from coast to coast. America, shielding herself in paranoid dementia, wrapped chains 'round Liberty and thrust all headlong onto The Great Chessboard called Vietnam.