| From “The Poem That Changed America: "Howl" Fifty Years Later”
Shinder, Jason (editor)
American Poetry Review, Mar/Apr 2006, v35, #2, p3-10
Allen Ginsberg's Howl is arguably one of the most influential
poems in American poetry in the last 50 years: "Celebrated
by many writers at the time of its publication, including Jack Kerouac,
Denise Levertov, and William Carlos Williams (and dismissed by many
critics including Lionel Trilling and Mark Van Doren), the poem
gained national recognition when it became the focus of proceedings
brought against it by the San Francisco Juvenile Department for
obscenity in 1957. Although the presiding Judge Horn dismissed the
charges by quoting the motto, "evil to him who thinks evil,"
the trial was the beginning of one of the most public and influential
poetic journeys of any single poem. The trial, and the publicity
it garnered, helped confirm not only the poem's literary and social
significance. It also helped to root the poem's opening line (one
of the most famous lines of poetry in world literature) in our collective
consciousness: 'I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed
by madness, starving, naked, hysterical…' This article presents
an excerpt from a recent book. Jason Shinder collected 26 essays
that document the poem's stormy reception to the canonical status
it enjoys today. As one reviewer said, 'Though everybody gives the
poem its due as an American classic, personal reactions dominate,
and nearly everyone has a Ginsberg story to tell, even if it's just
about being blown away by hearing him read.' This article includes
excerpts from selected contributions." Poet Jason Shinder
teaches in the graduate Writing Seminars at Bennington College.
He is the founder of YMCA National Writer's Voice and Sundance Institute's
Arts Writing Program.
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