Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) was born in Newark, New Jersey and was educated at Columbia University where he was a student of Lionel Trilling. After spending much time in New York City with William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and other Beat writers, he moved to San Francisco, where Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights Press published Howl and Other Poems (1956). The title poem--a condemnation of bourgeois culture, a celebration of sexuality, and a manifesto for the Beat movement--remains the source of Ginsberg's worldwide reputation. He was active in radical politics in the 1960s and studied Tibetan Buddhism and Western mystics such as William Blake. Additional detail on Ginsberg can be found at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Modern American Poetry website.
--Adapted from The Norton Anthology of Poetry
Reading:
Allen Ginsberg (1392-3), "Howl," "Footnote to Howl," and a "Supermarket in California," 1394-1402
Study Questions
1. Howl like The Waste Land has footnotes. How are these footnotes different? What is important about these differences?
2. Think back to Graff and Birkenstein's idea about reading literature for its conflicts. What conflicts seem to be at work in Howl?
3. Bring in questions or passages about Howl that you would like to discuss. What do you think about these passages? Please type and bring these in if you want credit.
