A Birthday in June ~ Get Ready to Howl!

“Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.” 
― Allen Ginsberg

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Allen Ginsberg was born on 3 June 1926. He was admitted to Columbia University, and as a student there in the 1940s, he began close friendships with William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and Jack Kerouac, all of whom later became leading figures of the Beat movement. As an icon of the Beats, Ginsberg was involved in countless political activities, including protests against the Vietnam War, and he spoke openly about issues that concerned him, such as free speech and gay rights agendas. Read more on Poets.org.

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“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by 
madness, starving hysterical naked, 
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn 
looking for an angry fix, 
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly 
connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, 
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat 
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of 
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities 
contemplating jazz...”

Opening lines of Howl, by Allen Ginsberg

To listen to an audio reading, click HERE.

"This is perhaps the most famous line in all of Ginsberg's poetry. From his poem "Howl," it first describes the subject of the poem - the 'best minds' - figures who have been rejected by society for their unwillingness to conform to its institutions and ideals." Read more HERE. Ginsberg was concerned with the state of creative thinking in the 50s - how it was bound by conformity and laws preventing freedom of expression, if the ideas being expressed were deemed inappropriate. Howl itself was considered obscene and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who published it under City Lights Press, was arrested and brought to trial in 1957.

However, times have changed. Here we are in the second decade of the Twenty First Century, and I'm wondering if we have anything to howl about... If you do have a rant, then let us hear it. The form is prose-poetry or free verse, inspired by that of Ginsberg and in honour of his innovation and enormous contribution to the poetic movement of the 20th Century.