"Howl" and the Beat Generation

Paper Summary:

This is a look at the various literary criticisms of ?Howl?, the famous poem by Allen Ginsburg. The author argues that the criticism is as schizophrenic as the poem itself. Opinions are presented from the following critics and writers: Robert Henson, Diane Middlebrook, Alicia Ostriker and Norman Podhoretz.

From the Paper:

"Allen Ginsberg, born in 1926, and often hailed as the poet laureate of "the beat generation" creates in "Howl", a frenzied controversy, among writers, which is the source and subject of much criticism and contradiction. ?Howl,? Published in 1955, perhaps Ginsberg's most famous poem and the center of a highly scandalized censorship case, has been both praised and criticized as a monolith for "the beat generation." Acclaimed by members of what could be considered low culture, the pop cultural masses, as well as by what could be considered high culture, the academic and renown scholar, as a representation of social hypocrisy, "Howl" cannot be categorized by either. The academic and knowledgeable language, references and devices used in a radical and informal style make it impossible to force "Howl" into either high or low culture brackets. "Howl" eludes the past 50 years of criticism as a comprehensive outburst of everything frustrated and repressed in the postwar baby boom era and thus is a deceptively easy yet slippery target for this discussion"

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