Howl, Allen Ginsberg | John Hollander (review date spring 1957)
John Hollander (review date spring 1957)
SOURCE: Hollander, John. “Poetry Chronicle.” Partisan Review 24, no. 2 (spring 1957): 296-8.
[In the following excerpt, Hollander describes Howl and Other Poems as both “tiresome” and exemplifying real talent.]
It is only fair to Allen Ginsberg, however, to remark on the utter lack of decorum of any kind in his dreadful little volume [Howl]. I believe that the title of his long poem, “Howl,” is meant to be a noun, but I can't help taking it as an imperative. The poem itself is a confession of the poet's faith, done into some 112 paragraph-like lines, in the ravings of a lunatic friend (to whom it is dedicated), and in the irregularities in the lives of those of his friends who populate his rather disturbed pantheon. Here is the poem's beginning:
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the...
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