Howl Questions and Answers

Howl

Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" critiques America and the American dream by comparing it to "Moloch," a destructive biblical idol, and attacking celebrated features of American life, such as skyscrapers and...

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Howl

This line turns on a metaphor that likens cigarette smoking to capitalism. Cigarette smoking creates a "narcotic tobacco haze" for the smoker. The narcotic is nicotine, which calms people down and...

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Howl

Yes, there are explicit references to sex in Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl," but they are most often disguised in terms and images that were intended to shock the mainstream reading public.

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Howl

Allen Ginsberg's iconic poem "Howl" contains many themes or messages, and one of those themes which ties all three parts of the poem together is the concept of religion. Ginsberg would not claim to...

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Howl

Beat poet Allan Ginsberg's "Howl" is unquestionably a poetic celebration of the counterculture of the 1950s (he first shared it at a poetry reading in 1955). While it is a poem, "Howl" breaks many...

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Howl

“Howl” neither celebrates nor condemns drug use. It’s probably more accurate to argue that Ginsberg romanticizes or glorifies drugs and the role that they play in the lives of his nonconformist...

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Howl

In Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” mental illness or madness is the result of society’s oppression. The sensitive people are literally driven crazy by the violence of society, but they are the ones who...

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Howl

The poem "Howl" by the beat poet Allen Ginsberg is a celebration, or at least a documentation, of the counterculture of the 1950s. He writes about both insanity and conformity, and for him there is...

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Howl

I'd say Ginsberg was describing the world as he saw it and to make his vision graphic and to convey the images as vivid as possible he did use hyperbole. His descriptions for the most part are...

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Howl

As one of the poets of the "Beat Generation," Allen Ginsberg experimented with the spontaneity and flow of emotion that often characterizes jazz; thus his writing is often called "typewriter jazz,"...

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Howl

The authors and poets of the beatnik generation frequently refer to jazz music in their writings, not only by specifically mentioning the music and artists within the genre, but also by the manner...

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Howl

"Howl" is one of the least personally emotional--expressing the least personal authorial emotion--of the list of poems presented by Plath, Bishop, and Lowell. In "Howl," Ginsberg is subjectively...

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Howl

"Howl" is an edgy, controversial poem that uses irony as a key technique in order to create a sense of "distance" between the reader and the content.

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Howl

Anaphora is the repetition of words, phrases, or lines in a written work, and even a cursory reading of Allen Ginsberg's iconic poem "Howl" reveals his consistent use of this technique to emphasize...

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Howl

It's difficult to describe as avant-garde any poem from as late as the 1950s. So much had already been done experimentally in verse before this that poets for the most part could only make...

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