Howl Now

[revolutionrabbit]

For those of us that were alive when Howl was read in North Beach in 1955.

for those of us that remember what it was like in America in 55 when a few writers and poets dare open the poetic marvelous out of the bag, man.

Allen was at the center of the maelstrom of the Beat that is just a word that replaced the other word, for the Lost Generation.

We do not need to call hippies, "Hippies", we do not need to call beats, "Beat". the beat is the street, Howl broke on through to the other side, and became the flower of power of love that shouted it from the roof tops.

Howl was a cry in the dark night of America, it was a poem of poems that crawled out of the basements, and into the living rooms of black and white TV.

Howl is like all of Dylan songs rolled into one, Howl is a blueprint for blues and jazz poetry that tells it like it is, it is the romantic revolution born from the sardonic saxophone of the times a changin.

I don't remember the first time I read Howl, I was 17, in 67, I was another teenager in the middle of the psychedelic wave looking for a sign in the torrent of voices that washed over me, a stranger in a strange days found us land.

from the radio, the television, the school, the people in charge. I remember the rock music and the lyrics and sounds were large.

I was seeing the lies and the brainwash and the distortion before my eyes, I was looking high and low for a vision that would clear the static from my mental attic.

Out of this came the wild Beat, the stony Dylan days, and the shiny Beatles nights, I heard the surrealistic Howl come through the frail construct of my world, it blew down what was left of my childhood conditioning, and the LSD did not hurt at all, too.

Slowly I began to find the poets that would blow my mind, and Ginsberg was a source that would awaken in me the need and desire to find a way to say what it was that all that howling wind of freedom flashing in my brain, to help me stay sane in an insane hard rain a fallin.

Calling me to go out into the Allen alleyways and let the bongos in my blood pound to the nice noise out of the vacuum voids of cities and silence, of wars and machines of hate and floods of poverty when we walked to the different drum.

Howl knocked down the barriers, was a vessel for the influence of all those writers and poets that inspired Allen in the cardboard dawn of late fifties doldrums, depressing gray conformity, and dreary beatnik deadpan indifference, but like Kerouac rides on the road until the road goes no more, the writers ride the keys on their sacred second-hand typewriters until the ribbon runs out of ink, and they think what they did not want to think, but what they had to think, until the thought meets the empty white page.

yes, we let out the rage of pent up emotion, of the horror of desolation of our leaders who forget the wisdom of the ancients, and the native sons left behind in the trail of tears and chains, and a brain is a terrible thing to waste.

In our haste to be cool, we to forget to learn what history tells us, as we rush down the hallucinations that are manufactured by one-dimensional man, in this wasteland of hidden reality, we forgot to smell the coffee for the flowers, and lost all our precious hours to the media blackout that was a coming down the tube, we should have read our Poe by candle light and saw the gothic shadows winging through the home of the brave,

as we run through the flimsy reasons they are giving us for our amnesia of ambiguity.let all the howls that came from Howl arrive on time in the future when the Blessed minds of generations once again take on the tall call, and read the mind staggering stream of consciousness writing on the western wall.

[dadio]

yes, spot on, and very good, too.

[revolutionrabbit]

a meditation on a great poem
that made such a lasting impression

how many different ways to say it
can't really do it justice

always wanted to write my own Howl
or my own Naked Lunch of On the Road
or write my own Dylan like song

I heard Ginsberg read live one time
met a poet that influenced him to write it
that was there that night in 55 in North Beach

there all gone now, even the one that showed me
how to write, all those poets I saw gone now
except Ferlinghetti and Jack Hershman

[the mingo]

Ferlinghetti & Hershman are gone too, they just ain't left yet.
Thx for the write. I enjoyed it.

[saw]

very good.....a deep look inside a counter culture from someone that embraced the questions being asked, the ideals the history called into question.....the leaps of thought that sound like clarions to any young man or woman that isn't one size fits all.....you write with the appropriate passion, in my mind.....explosions like this can't be really named, they're too big to label...... to categorize ...enjoyed the ride

[revolutionrabbit]

yes,the reasons i first got into poetry was because of people like Ginsberg, it was to find a voice that could address issues, confront issues, see the writing on the wall, and tell it like it is, to me that meant reading the people that received that calling.

[mnaz]

when is the next explosion? how did we succumb so easily to the corporate monolith? . . .

amazing stuff, rabbit.

[revolutionrabbit]

oh my, i feel like i am living in a moment that is like Howl, it is like the first time i took LSD, it is like the first time i heard Like a Rolling Stone, it is like all rolled into the day Kennedy was assassinated, or John Lennon, how can i say that i had some kind of need to be a revolution of revelation, to hear the song of William Blake, or the cry of Rimbaud....i think i knew, always knew, that from the moment that JFK was dead, that the same bullet that went through his head, was the same one that was going through the heads of all victims of all wars, drug wars, oil wars, farm wars, the human race running through that bullet looking for the end of history.But, the exit wound, that sun black hole, like a scene from a Borges story, where you see the Tyger Tyger passing through the starry starry night, you see that beast sloughing to Bethlehem, that widening gyre, see the river called Alph, see what Einstein thought when he realized what power he had unleashed, just before you see the last thought of John K or John L, just before they though that they could change themselves and us for the better of humankind, or put an end to war, and give peace an everlasting chance.We are in that Howl moment now, call it 9/11 call it 2012, call it heads or tails, we are in that God is Dead moment, call it Twilight of the idols, or Twilight Zone, call it star gate, or para gate, call it beyond good and evil, call it Time-wave, or history-wave, or evolution, we are in a smokestack lightning moment...a comin a comin down the track, the record is still on the turntable, and it's John Coltrane, Love Supreme, and Allen gets up to the podium and begins to read....I saw the best minds of my generation....

[Steve Plonk]

Howl now brown cowl,
We feel the e-lec-tri-city now,
Velocity has sprang up in our jowl,
Like from the Goliards in
The middle ages,
We find ourselves making
Brand new pages...
We catch the continuum
In the times & run run run
Till daddy-o takes the
PC awayyyyyyy...
We had more funnery
When we left the nunnery
Of staid and sterile
Straight & narrow--
Took the fast track
On the bullet train,
Hopped that hip-hop
Jet airplane,
Break danced our bad selves
Until it was all so good
Changed ourselves & our neighborhood--
Times need to catch up
So we need to sing for our sup,
Get on with it & solve the shell game,
Bring in the clothesline clothing from the rain...
To be more succinct,
With what is fragrant & what stinks--
Time for more progressive action, methinks...