Howl



Howl

Introduction

The poem Howl is written by Allen Ginsberg. "Howl" is one of the key works of the Beat movement of the 1950s. The poem is dedicated to Carl Solomon, whom Ginsberg befriended when both of them were patients in a psychiatric hospital in 1949. Describing a generation of young people "hipsters" who took drugs and absorbed themselves in city culture, the poem begins:

“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”

The youth of Ginsberg's "Howl" found no haven in universities and found the ...