A Howl For Carl Solomon By Allen Ginsberg

Nicholas Stampone

Dr. Williams

Readings in Poetry

27 April 2023

The Humanity of Allen Ginsberg Allen Ginsberg is known as one of the fathers of the Beat poetic movement, claiming worldwide literary renown, greatly due to his most popular poem “A Howl for Carl Solomon,” or, “Howl.” This poem is incredibly representative of both the Beat movement and Allen Ginsberg himself; it is impulsive and spontaneous, vulgar, and sexual. The poem itself projects the mental illness Ginsberg was battling at the time. It details depictions of mental illness, drugs, sex, and anti-Capitalistic views, which led to extreme controversy and country-wide book bans. “A Howl for Carl Solomon” has gained incredible notoriety partially due to its obscenity trial, where

A more accurate depiction of it, and “Howl” itself, is “homosexuality, addiction, and jazz.” These are ideas that are more ‘honest’ than their counterparts, and this is an ‘honesty’ that is ever-present in “Howl.” He is not writing about sex as a whole, he is writing about homosexuals and the lack of support for them in his society. He is not writing in support of drugs, but about “burn[ing] holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism” (line 31). If someone was gay, they were shown in a manner that may erase their homosexuality. Jeffrey B. Falla writes about subversion in his article “Disembodying the Body: Allen Ginsberg’s Passional Subversion of Identity.” In it, Ginsberg is depicted in Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums as straight, and Ginsberg comments “’I guess he decided to write a novel in which I was a big, virile hero instead of a Jewish Communist fag” (Falla, 58). Here, Ginsberg is taking a claim over his identity; he is taking pride in his Jewish blood, a people who were prosecuted so severely in his lifetime. He also takes pride in his Communist beliefs during the second Red Scare, when the American population overwhelmingly demonized any leftist beliefs. “Who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Squre weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down. And wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also

Ginsberg is a more ‘typical’ person, without all the airy flow but with such personality, such humanity. His writing style is uncensored and unaltered, just like he is. In fact, the idea of censorship is something he morally disagrees with. He cites translations such as that of Loeb and asks, “‘Why have the Loeb library texts been translated to leave out the balls?’…He refers to the Loeb edition’s refusal to translate Catullus’s promise to ‘face-fuck and sodomize’ his poetic enemies” (Pfaff, 74). His ideas are one you would hear someone utter today rather than put on a page; this is what makes Ginsberg so readable and digestible to today’s audience. He is relatable and his openness and personality is easy to mistake for friendliness, making the reader feel as though they are part of a bond. Another aspect popular in both Ginsberg’s writings and the Beat movement in general is that of jazz. Jazz consists mostly of quick, jarring changes, complicated, though provoking chords, and improvisation. It is known for its flow and listenability, which seeps into “Howl.” In terms of jarring changes, a great example is