Howl, By Allen Ginsberg - 1256 Words

Howl for Somebody I Never Met in a Place I Never Heard of about a Cause we Already Won Howl, by Allen Ginsberg, is an inaccessible writing with such obscure references from a unique personal life and small subculture from 50 years ago that it cannot stand on its own today. It tackles issues society has already decided, makes them completely unrelatable, and attempts to shock readers. Except to literary historians, this poem is irrelevant to modern society because of constant references to obscure places and people, frequent vulgarity to which internet-based society has been desensitized, and societal issues that already have national-level attention. To â€Å"get† Howl, you just had to be there. Ginsberg acknowledges that the poem was not†¦show more content†¦However, no readers outside this tight knit group of poets would ever know Ginsberg was referring to real events, except in the one line where he almost parenthetically states, â€Å"that actually happened,† which serves as a point of contrast by which a reader may presume none of the other events actually happened. Carl Solomon features heavily in part three, but a first time reader has no idea who he is, why he is, or even when he was. The best an uninformed reader can say is that he is in Rockland, and that it might not be a nice place; the severity of said not-nicity might range from the local government confining residents in straightjackets to simply having an unusually high population of mosquitoes during a rainy season. Even when making a reference that people outside his circle of friends would know, Ginsberg chooses Tokay, a wine, which t o some readers, is nothing more than a species of gecko that lives on some South-West Pacific islands. Interestingly enough, soldiers fighting wars across these islands called the Tokay Gecko the â€Å"F-you lizard† for its call, which to some sounded like â€Å"tokay,† but sounded like â€Å"F-you† to the soldiers. Other places Ginsberg references that will mean nothing to farmers in Iowa or Wall Street investors include: Paterson, Paradise Alley, Fugazzi, and Bowery. At times, Howl gets somewhat explicit, mentioning gyzym, cocksuckers, anal sex, and granite cocks. Thematic referencing aside, nothing