of Arts and Letters (1974), a National Arts
Club Gold Medal (1979), a Poetry Society of
America Gold Medal (1986), a Golden Wreath
from Yugoslavia’s Struga Poetry Festival (1986), a
Before Columbus Foundation Award for Lifetime
Achievement (1990), a Harriet Monroe Poetry
Award from the University of Chicago (1991),
an American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fel-
lowship (1992), and a medal of Chevalier de
l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French
government (1993).
Poem Summary
Part I
LINES 1–11
In his essay ‘‘Notes Written on Finally
Recording ‘Howl’’’ (inDeliberate Prose: Selected
Essays, 1952–1995), Ginsberg describes part I as
‘‘a lament for the Lamb in America with instan-
ces of remarkable lamblike youths.’’ Jesus Christ
is known as the Lamb of God; the name connotes
innocence and mercy.
‘‘Howl’’ opens with Ginsberg’s affirmation
that he has seen the greatest talents of his gen-
eration ruined by madness. He paints a picture
of these people and their lives, drawn from his
own experiences and those of artists, writers,
intellectuals, musicians, and psychiatric patients
whom he encountered. The poem shows them as
outcasts from conventional society and details
the abuses they have suffered.
Desperate, the people he has seen stagger
along the city streets looking for drugs in an
attempt to use them to make a connection to a
spiritual reality. They are starving both materi-
ally and spiritually. Poor and exhausted, they
live in apartments lacking hot running water.
They are described as hipsters, a Beat term for
people who felt alienated from conventional
society and who were ‘‘hip,’’ or in tune with the
latest ideas and fashions. Terms opposite tohip
includedstraightandsquare, which were used by
Beats to describe those people who supported
conventional society and all that it stood for:
the military-industrial complex, mechanization,
consumerism, and moral repression.
The El mentioned in line 5 is the elevated
railway in Manhattan. The reference to
Mohammed connects the Muslim prophet
Mohammed’s spiritual status to the people
of the counterculture. The hipsters seek
understanding by studying in the universities,
which, however, are populated by scholars of
war. In an annotation to a later edition of
‘‘Howl,’’ Ginsberg writes that while he was at
Columbia University, Columbia scientists
helped to make the atom bombs that the
United States dropped on the Japanese cities
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
The allusion to Blake refers to the eigh-
teenth-century English visionary poet William
Blake, who was an important influence on
Ginsberg. The hipster students are expelled
from academe for wild behavior and obscene
writings (as Ginsberg was). The Terror in line 8
implies a threatening world beyond these peo-
ple’s rooms. Hipsters have been caught running
marijuana from Mexico into the United States.LINES 12–22
Lines 12 to 15 describe enhanced percep-
tions experienced under the influence of peyote,
Benzedrine (amphetamine), and alcohol. The
allusion to hydrogen refers to the hydrogen
bomb, a nuclear bomb even more destructive
than the atomic bomb.MEDIA
ADAPTATIONS Howls, Raps & Roars: Recordings from the
San Francisco Poetry Renaissance(1993),
produced by Fantasy, is a boxed set of four
audio CDs of some of the best-known poets
of the Beat movement reading their own
work. The compilation includes a recording
of Ginsberg reading ‘‘Howl.’’
Howl, and Other Poems(1998), produced by
Fantasy, is an audio CD of Ginsberg read-
ing ‘‘Howl’’ and ‘‘Footnote to ‘Howl’’’ as
well as other well-known works.
‘‘Howl’’ and ‘‘Footnote to ‘Howl’’’ (1997)
are available as MP3 downloadable record-
ings of Ginsberg reading his poems.Howl