Howl
Allen Ginsberg’s ‘‘Howl’’ was first introduced to
the public at a poetry reading on October 13,
1955 (some sources say October 7), at the Six
Gallery in San Francisco. Ginsberg’s passionate
performance of the poem established him as an
important figure in the antiestablishment Beat
movement. The Beats were a group of American
writers who came to prominence in the mid-
1950s and early 1960s. They rebelled against
conventional post-World War II morality, mate-
rialism, consumerism, and war, and embraced
spontaneous expression, sexual freedom, alter-
native lifestyles, spiritual search, and experimen-
tation with drugs. ‘‘Howl’’ was published in the
1956 collectionHowl, and Other Poems. In 1957,
the poem became the target of a landmark
obscenity trial.
The poem is an outcry of anguish against all
that Ginsberg felt was unjust, repressive, and
harmful to the individual in American society:
consumerism, mechanization, and intellectual
conformity. At the same time, it is a celebration
of the emerging counterculture and an expres-
sion of sympathy for its pioneers. It is written in
the long-line style of Walt Whitman, a nineteenth-
century American poet who was an important
influence on Ginsberg. ‘‘Howl’’ has a strong auto-
biographical aspect and also contains sociopoliti-
cal critique, as well as some sexual imagery. Over
fifty years after its initial publication, the poem
retains its power to shock and stands as one of the
most influential poems of the modern era.
131ALLEN GINSBERG
1956