Inside Howl Allen Ginsberg, famous beat poet, was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1926 (About Allen Ginsberg). His father Louis Ginsberg was also a poet and English teacher. His mother, Naomi Levy Ginsberg supported the communist party and dealt with serious mental health issues (Charters). She spent 15 years living in mental hospitals due to seizures and paranoia until she passed in 1956 at Pilgrim State Hospital (Charters). Her condition greatly affected Ginsberg.
Ginsberg furthered his education at Colombia University (Vitale). While there he met some really influential people. His professors and friends pushed him to pursue poetry although he was going to school for law (About Allen Ginsberg). He became friends with Jack Kerouac and William…show more content… I personally haven’t heard of this poem until now but the title did catch my attention. The first thing that came to my mind was a wolf simply because they howl. Although the poem isn’t about wolves howling in the night, the meaning of howl did relate to the content. Howl is known for the type of language Ginsberg used; very blunt, sexual and nonchalant. Ginsberg’s style of writing and use of words and tones is different and allowed for him to get his message across in a non-traditional way. Howl is separated into three separate parts with each having a theme of its own, yet all share madness as the common…show more content… Saying that they “passed through” while “ hallucinating” hints that they took drugs while on campus. In the following line Ginsberg says that these people were “expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull.” Chances are that they had a good reason for their actions. Since they were considered people of “great minds” they must’ve been smart, but not institutional smart. Their thinking and creativity was on another level and couldn’t be constrained.
Part I has no periods, just commas, making it feel like one long sentence. And this was intentional in order to make it feel like the people being talked about in this section are running or walking away from whatever is holding them back. So the form of this first part gives the impression of escaping from madness, which in this case was
