It was the poem that defined a generation. Howl, the defiantly gay manifesto that Allen Ginsberg read aloud for the first time at a Six Gallery public reading in San Francisco in 1955, railed against the life-snuffing hetero-oppressive conformity of the 1950s.
Filled with anger and rage, Howl bemoans the causes of addiction as it simultaneously celebrates Walt Whitman, Ginsberg s Beat Generation comrades, cum, Bach, jazz and jism, the Bible, and a litany of transgressive acts. Hearing it read aloud by Ginsberg, in a voice in which heartbreak and fury intermingle, is an experience like no other.
That the poem s coming out party, so to speak, came just a few months after the somewhat closeted Leonard Bernstein s 40-minute opera,
Bay Area Reporter :: Allen Ginsberg s first recorded Howl
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On the Road, Again - Los Angeles Review of Books
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