Howl

So, it's a bit long.  But if you have a spare like ten minutes, you should read it aloud to yourself.  If you think about it, people didn't have writing for most of their history.  Language evolved out of musical grunts, and poetry's the music made from those sounds.  It's totally meant to be heard aloud.

And I mean, the best part is, you can hate it if you want.  If it just doesn't sound good or offends you or is too long or something, that's the proper response you should be having.  It's just supposed to make you feel SOMETHING.  But trying anything new is always a fun thing.

Ginsberg was a beat poet, he came around right before the hippies.  A lot of the ideals from this poem informed the hippies.  Ginsberg got arrested for distributing this poem in pamphlets on the street.  It was deemed obscene by a court because he talks about butt sex.  But it's kind of a lament, about how Ginsberg felt there was all this crazy terrible stuff going down around him that he couldn't do anything but... Howl.  Hahaha.  It was illegal to do gay stuff at the time (1950s) and anything that wasn't in the norm was shunned and treated as if it didn't exist, Leave It to Beaver style.  Ginsberg wrote this as a response to that attitude.

He first read it at a little coffee shop in San Francisco and people were floored.  As an artist nowadays, it's hard to get people off on what you're trying to say.  Everything's either been done well or to death already.  It's hard to buck against social norms with traditional words anymore.  Obscenity's been done.  No one's shocked by anything anymore, except old people.  How's a guy supposed to make a splash in such a hugeass pool?  I mean, there's already so many competing for interest and like no one reads anymore.  Especially not (ewwwww) poetry.  Fucking standardized testing.

There is no real answer to a poem, and that's the secret.  Scope "Howl."  It's a great piece and it may even shock you a little.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=179381

Currently Reading: Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb