I thought I wouldn’t write apoem, but just
write what I wanted to without fear, let my
imagination go, open secrecy, and scribble
magic lines from my real mind—sum up my
life—something I wouldn’t be able to show
anybody, writ for my own soul’s ear and a
few other golden ears.The poem, Ginsberg continues, was, ‘‘typed out
madly in one afternoon, a tragic custard-pie
comedy of wild phrasing, meaningless images.’’
The resulting stream-of-consciousness style may
indicate that in much of the poem it is futile to
look for intentionally logical connections of
ideas. The very title of the poem suggests that it
is a howl of anguish and other spontaneous
feelings.
Transcendentalist Poetry and Philosophy
Ginsberg considered himself the poetic heir to
the nineteenth-century American transcenden-
talist poets and writers, including Henry David
Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and, in partic-
ular, Walt Whitman. The transcendentalists pos-
ited the existence of a pure state of spirituality
that transcends the material world and that is
outside of time. They believed that this state
could be accessed through direct mystical expe-
rience rather than by following the doctrines
of established religions. The transcendentalists
shared with Ginsberg and the Beat movement a
rejection of materialism and external authority
as well as a conviction of the vital importance of
the subjective experience of reality.
Confessional Poetry
‘‘Howl’’ has strong elements of confessional
poetry, the poetry of the self. This genre emerged
in the United States in the late 1950s and early
1960s with the work of such poets as Sylvia
Plath, Robert Lowell, and Anne Sexton. It is
characterized by the poet’s revelations of raw,
intimate, and often unflattering information
about himself or herself. While Ginsberg’s
‘‘Howl’’ fits this definition, it rises above the
genre in its humor about the excesses of his
hipsters and in its transcendence of the personal
through its rare combination of social critique
and prophetic vision.
Density
‘‘Howl’’ is written in an extremely condensed
style. For example, in part I, lines 2 and 15,
Ginsberg abandoned normal syntax and the
rules of grammar in order to achieve a close
juxtaposition of evocative images. Often these
images can be unraveled to reveal a number of
possible associations and resonances. In other
cases, the meaning is enigmatic or ambiguous.
This style, which defies grammatical convention,
perfectly reflects the rebellious attitude
expressed in the poem.Symbolism
The antithesis of the Beat movement is symboli-
cally represented in the poem by the demonic
and robotic figure of Moloch, which represents
the evil that grips American society and the
fallen state of mind of the individuals that
make up that society. The psychiatric institution
featured in the poem has a real-life correlate and
literal significance, but it also has symbolic sig-
nificance, representing attempts by conformist
society to repress rebels like Solomon, Ginsberg,
and (to some degree) Naomi Ginsberg.Irony
There are many ironic reversals in the poem.
Conventional society is portrayed as pathologi-
cally insane, while people who have been insti-
tutionalized as mentally ill are portrayed as sane,
wise, and divinely inspired. Criminals are shown
as angelic (part I, line 63), and the homosexual
acts that are stigmatized by conventional society
are celebrated as holy (perhaps because Gins-
berg sees all forms of sex as a part of love).
In part I, line 30, Ginsberg refers to hipster
heroes investigating the Federal Bureau of
Investigation—an ironic reversal of the expected
roles, as Ginsberg and many of his associates
were investigated by the bureau for alleged Com-
munist sympathies and drug offenses. Gins-
berg’s reversal suggests that morally, he
believes that the authorities are the ones who
deserve to be investigated for crimes.
Ginsberg also points out the ironies and
inconsistencies of capitalism, which is described
as a narcotic haze. Although the capitalist sys-
tem of the United States has criminalized the use
of many narcotic drugs favored by the Beat
generation, it has encouraged addiction to the
narcotic drug tobacco, from which tobacco
companies make huge profits, as Ginsberg
points out in his annotated edition.
Further levels of irony can be found. Gins-
berg is saying that capitalism is itself a drug. This
may be (in Ginsberg’s view) because of the
dependence on money and consumerism thatHowl