Read the writer’s comments and bio<\/a> Allen Ginsberg\u2019s landmark poem \u201cHowl\u201d has come to epitomize society\u2019s perception of the Beat Generation in 1950s America. The movement stands as a symbol of counterculture, completely unabashed in its renunciation of the establishment, violence and war, particularly as it applied to America\u2019s involvement in Vietnam at the time, and any external force that attempted to limit genuine self-expression. As a result of their non-conformist mindset, the people in the poem often find themselves at odds with law enforcement, academia, and even the constraints of time. Its narrative tone closely resembles that of cin\u00e9ma v\u00e9rit\u00e9, characterized by its documentary style and often shot on a handheld camera, which added a sense of realism not found in typical mainstream films. Thematically, the poem is very similar to Underground Film, which was a term used to describe the more countercultural and experimental subset of avant-garde film.<\/p>\n In the poem\u2019s exploration of the aforementioned topics, Ginsberg manages to combine the styles of multiple film movements and themes into a collection of images and sensations captured through his own unique lens. What is the purpose of combining so many cinematic influences, especially in a literary medium? The answer lies in the film editing technique called montage, which was first brought to American films via the Soviets in the early 20th century. David Bordwell states in his essay \u201cThe Idea of Montage in Soviet Art and Film\u201d that \u201cMontage was used to build a narrative (by formulating an artificial time and space or guiding the viewer\u2019s attention from one narrative point to another), to control rhythm, to create metaphors, and to make rhetorical points\u201d (9). \u201cHowl\u201d therefore finds its unity through the use of this technique, making its particular narrative more coherent while demonstrating that, like film, one of its main purposes is to serve an audience.<\/p>\n A question that should be answered before investigating exactly how \u201cHowl\u201d applies montage as an organizational technique is why it\u2019s beneficial to read the poem through a cinematic as opposed to exclusively literary lens at all. Firstly, Part 1 of \u201cHowl\u201d begins from a visual perspective, with the speaker saying in the first line \u201cI saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by\/madness, starving hysterical naked\u201d (9). The past tense verb \u201csaw\u201d automatically puts the speaker in the position of a spectator who is not only watching the events of the poem unfold, but is more specifically looking back on them. Therefore, though he may at first seem like a passive observer, the fact that he has a memory of such specific details reveals that he was most likely part of the activity at the time it was happening. The retrospective nature of the poem is also significant as it relates to montage because it creates a sense of what Bordwell called \u201cartificial time and space.\u201d In other words, the events described in the poem seem almost mythic as they are being retold and compressed within the inappropriately short length of a poem. Similarly, montages in films are used to condense events that may have taken place over the course of hours or even days into a shorter span of time.<\/p>\n \u201cHowl\u201d displays a montage made up of the influences of two major film movements, but the style and themes those film movements tackle themselves are also used in the poem to create montages of their own, though these are more thematic than structural. The use of the first, cin\u00e9ma v\u00e9rit\u00e9, often catches the people in the poem in very private moments. In Parker Tyler\u2019s book, Underground Film, <\/em>he states that \u201cCin\u00e9ma v\u00e9rit\u00e9 (when genuine rather than faked or mimicked) may be an openly announced, often publicly practiced form of eavesdropping, like asking someone, entirely without notice, to sit, walk, and\/or talk for portrait\u201d (38). Similarly, \u201cHowl\u201d shows the reader the people in the poem when they are \u201ccowered in unshaven rooms in underwear\u201d and \u201ccrying in white gymnasiums naked\/and trembling before the machinery of other\/ skeletons\u201d (10, 13). Moments like these catch people in vulnerable situations, either \u201ccowered\u201d or \u201ccrying\u201d while occupying seemingly vacant and the unsettling and strange spaces of \u201cunshaven rooms\u201d and \u201cwhite gymnasiums.\u201d<\/p>\n On the other hand, Tyler argues that cin\u00e9ma v\u00e9rit\u00e9 is \u201cfraudulent\u201d if \u201cindividuals are eager to be photographed (and\/or interviewed)\u201d because \u201cone can only assume that they wish to publicize what they do naturally, willingly, and ordinarily\u201d (38). \u201cHowl\u201d is most definitely a representation of \u201cgenuine\u201d cin\u00e9ma v\u00e9rit\u00e9, however, because the people in the poem are completely unaware that they are being documented since the documentation (i.e. the writing of the poem) is taking place after the actual events occurred. Cin\u00e9ma v\u00e9rit\u00e9 therefore adds a sense of spontaneity and authenticity to the poem, which is strengthened by Ginsberg\u2019s own close connection to the subjects he\u2019s writing about, who one can assume are his fellow Beat friends. The singular speaker recounting the events in the poem acts just as dexterously as a handheld camera does when shooting in the cin\u00e9ma v\u00e9rit\u00e9 style.<\/p>\n Underground Film in the 1950s also captures a similar sense of realism and authenticity, and both Underground films and \u201cHowl\u201d provide the audience with an inside look into their respective movements. Tyler claims \u201cThe Underground has enshrined the camera as a wild, willful, inquisitive eye, disposed to give graphic publicity to everything that has remained taboo in the realm of popular commercial films, even the most serious and artistic among them\u201d (35). One could just as easily use this description to characterize the central ethos of the Beat Movement that is highlighted in \u201cHowl.\u201d The people in the poem are often described as \u201ccrazy,\u201d \u201cobscene,\u201d and \u201cmad,\u201d people who \u201cdistributed Super Communist pamphlets in Union\/Square,\u201d \u201clost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate,\u201d and \u201cbit detectives in the neck and shrieked\/in police cars for committing no crime but their\/own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication (9, 12, 13, 14). The reference to homosexual love and the sadistic pleasure they get from physically harming law enforcement officials are both \u201cgraphic\u201d and touch on topics that were \u201ctaboo\u201d during 1950s America and, to some extent, today.<\/p>\n After returning from a trip to India in 1963, Ginsberg himself commented on the state of current avant-garde film, saying, \u201cThis is the film of cranks, eccentrics, sensitives, individuals one man one camera one movie\u2014that is to say the work of individual persons not corporations (\u201cBack to the Wall\u201d 8), (Kane 123). His characterization of avant-garde film as being made by \u201cone man one camera one movie\u201d echoes the intimate documentary style of cin\u00e9ma v\u00e9rit\u00e9, while the description of its filmmakers as \u201ccranks, eccentrics, [and] sensitives\u201d is very similar to how Ginsberg describes the people in \u201cHowl.\u201d<\/p>\n Also central to the Beat Generation that \u201cHowl\u201d documents, as well as the avant-garde film movement, was a rejection of institutions and organized thought, just as he claims that avant-garde films were the product of individuals rather than corporations. From the very beginning of \u201cHowl,\u201d the speaker tells us that the people described in the poem \u201cwere expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull\u201d and \u201cthrew potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism\u201d (9, 18). These instances of revolt are almost certainly autobiographical, referring to Ginsberg\u2019s own expulsion from Columbia and Ginsberg\u2019s friend and the man he dedicated \u201cHowl\u201d to, Carl Solomon, respectively.<\/p>\n The people in the poem also \u201cfell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying\/for each other\u2019s salvation and light and breasts\u201d (18). While their actions initially appear sincere, describing the cathedrals as \u201chopeless\u201d minimizes the effectiveness of religion and the progression from \u201csalvation\u201d to \u201clight\u201d to \u201cbreasts\u201d quickly moves away from the holy and into the sacrilegious. Instead of abiding by-pre-established authority, the people in the poem create their own. In a strange role reversal, the people in the poem \u201creappeared on the West Coast, investigating the\/F.B.I. in beards and shorts with big pacifist eyes\u201d (12). Here they continue to make a mockery of law enforcement by assuming those positions of authority themselves while being obviously ill-equipped to do so. The F.B.I. are described almost too casually with their \u201cshorts\u201d and \u201cbig pacifist eyes,\u201d diminishing whatever imposing authority they might have had before.<\/p>\n Clearly displaying such graphic and taboo topics could lead to the misconception that \u201cHowl\u2019s\u201d sole achievement is its shock value, but as Tyler says about Underground Film, \u201cif what is shown is rare, tempting, unusual, thrilling, it is only because big commercial film has so long neglected its natural opportunities\u201d (2). \u201cHowl\u201d serves the same function for poetry, making readers aware that the reason they may be so shocked by some of the content of the poem is most likely due to problems of public exposure on those topics rather than problems with the content itself.<\/p>\n Both Underground films and \u201cHowl\u201d therefore showed their audiences what everyone else was afraid to expose. Audience is an important element for both the medium of film and poetry. \u201cHowl\u201d in particular engaged with its audience through numerous live readings Ginsberg gave of the poem. Another one of Ginsberg\u2019s poems, \u201cAmerica\u201d acknowledges the audience even more directly, saying in one of the lines, \u201cI\u2019m addressing you\u201d (40). Such obvious and almost abrasive remarks immediately attract the reader\u2019s attention, making them more open to receiving the message trying to be conveyed.<\/p>\n However, the style in which \u201cHowl\u201d is written in is not entirely emblematic of the avant-garde films and their filmmakers that the poem was inspired by. Tyler notes that \u201c…a great pride of the true avant-garde filmmaker is that he can produce extraordinary effects through manipulations that in themselves are not costly\u201d (4). Ginsberg, on the other hand, does not use the same economy with his words in \u201cHowl.\u201d Made up of three parts and a footnote, it is significantly longer than his other poems in the same collection, such as \u201cSunflower Sutra\u201d and \u201cTranscription of Organ Music.<\/em>\u201d The extended length, however, is appropriate for the content of the poem, which is much wider in scope than the two aforementioned poems.<\/p>\n Ultimately, Tyler claims that the most meaningful connection between these two respective film and literary movements is their expression of \u201cuniversal tolerance\u201d (32). Besides the Beats\u2019 acceptance of people from all backgrounds, races, and sexualities, \u201cHowl\u2019s\u201d incorporation of various cinematic influences also demonstrates a more intellectual and ideological openness completely accepting of these different artistic mediums and styles while also being unafraid to stretch the boundaries of formal poetry. It is also important to note that Underground Film\u2019s influence on Ginsberg and his writing of \u201cHowl\u201d represents just one side of a mutually beneficial artistic exchange, one that sought to \u201cblur the lines between text and image,\u201d as Daniel Kane claims in his book We Saw the Light: Conversations Between the New American Cinema and Poetry<\/em> (124). The result of such blurring lead to the montage that makes up \u201cHowl.\u201d<\/p>\n A more minor cinematic influence on Ginsberg and \u201cHowl\u201d is slapstick comedy, which actually juxtaposes with the cin\u00e9ma v\u00e9rit\u00e9 style in other parts of the poem. Rather than being natural and spontaneous, slapstick comedy is exaggerated and unnatural, often juxtaposing violence and absurdity to create humor. Comic actor Charlie Chaplin was a leading figure in the genre with his famous character of the Tramp. In Susan King\u2019s article \u201cThe Evolution of Charlie Chaplin\u2019s Tramp,\u201d she cites documentarian and film preservationist Serge Bromberg\u2019s description of the Tramp as being \u201ca character of some vulgarity, a bit violent, very funny, but very slapstick\u201d (Bromberg). \u201cHowl\u201d also includes moments of \u201cvulgarity\u201d and violence, but the style in which they are written and even more so the way Ginsberg chose to read the poem to audiences brought out a lighter and surprisingly comedic tone.<\/p>\n After unsuccessfully searching for Eternity (a hopeless venture since their lives are already metaphorically contained within the confines of the poem), the speaker describes how the people in the poem:<\/p>\n \u201ccut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried\u201d (16).<\/p>\n Somewhat surprisingly, these lines were met with laughter when Ginsberg read them to a crowd. While suicide is not typically discussed in a humorous way, the peoples\u2019 unsuccessful attempts to cut their wrists not once, but three times could be read as twistedly comedic. They were subsequently \u201cforced to open antique\/stores where they thought they were growing\/old and cried,\u201d which makes a mockery of their humorously pitiful and depressing circumstances by emphasizing their dramatic reaction to the natural process of aging. Slapstick comedy is necessary in this moment in order to maintain the overall lightheartedness of the poem, whereas cin\u00e9ma v\u00e9rit\u00e9 and Underground Film might have taken this moment too seriously. Each cinematic influence that makes up the montage therefore serves a very specific purpose in maintaining the unity of the poem.<\/p>\n Kane also mentions that \u201cGinsberg\u2019s published statements on Chaplin overall suggest that he finds Chaplin anticipating the improvisatory, madcap, and nonconformist sensibility so crucial to the formation of what we can tentatively call the Beat aesthetic\u201d (113). There is no doubt that the people in \u201cHowl\u201d embody the \u201cnonconformist sensibility\u201d predated by Chaplin, with their rejection of the establishment as illustrated previously. While slapstick comedy does in some ways seem to contradict cin\u00e9ma v\u00e9rit\u00e9, its \u201cimprovisatory\u201d style is actually similar to the spontaneous and unstaged quality captured in cin\u00e9ma v\u00e9rit\u00e9. This improvisatory style naturally shows more diverse content as is the case in \u201cHowl,\u201d with people who travelled from the streets of Manhattan to Mexico and Colorado and \u201cwandered around and around at midnight in the\/railroad yard wondering where to go,\u201d a scene that highlights their incurable restlessness (11).<\/p>\n Reading \u201cHowl\u201d illuminates how the poets depicted in the poem were striving to escape the physical, spiritual, and temporal constraints of their current world, but ultimately to no avail. In Part I, Ginsberg\u2019s \u201cangelheaded hipsters\u201d \u201cthrew their watches off the roof to cast their ballot\/for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks\/fell on their heads every day for the next decade\u201d (16). When Ginsberg read these lines aloud, the audience again burst into laughter. Here the reference to voting with the word \u201cballot,\u201d which represents a uniquely democratic institution, sharply contrasts with the tendency of both Underground Film\u2019s and the Beat Generation that is described in \u201cHowl\u201d to reject any formal institutions. Nevertheless, they keep getting literally and metaphorically hit in the head by time itself. They appear completely out of tune with reality as if they\u2019re sleepwalking through life. Indeed, the \u201calarm clocks\u201d falling on their heads seem to be an attempt to wake them up out of their idealistic dream. Lastly, the description of them as \u201cangelheaded\u201d also conveys the sense that they do not quite belong to the mundane earth below.<\/p>\n Given that one of the characteristics of a montage is juxtaposition, it makes sense that \u201cHowl\u201d would incorporate styles that clearly contrast with each other. Mark Reid asserts in his essay \u201cCinema, Poetry, Pedagogy: Montage as Metaphor\u201d that \u201cThe juxtaposition of unrelated shots into new relations would jolt the reader out of a kind of political somnambulism and into a new awareness of the political relations of things. Montage would punch people into political consciousness\u201d (61). Not only does \u201cHowl\u201d attempt to \u201cjolt the reader,\u201d but the people in the poem as well, who sometimes aimlessly drift from one place and time to another with seemingly no purpose. The poem is able to deepen its political impact by being able to achieve something as a written art form that a visual medium such as film cannot. Ginsberg illustrates each moment in just enough detail to welcome the reader into the world of the poem\u2019s inhabitants, but ultimately it is left up to the reader\u2019s imagination to finish constructing the images in their own minds. Ginsberg therefore does not necessarily do all of the work of piecing together the montage that is \u201cHowl\u201d because to do so would defeat the poem\u2019s attempt at actively engaging the reader.<\/p>\n Bordwell, David. \u201cThe Idea of Montage in Soviet Art and Film.\u201d Cinema Journal<\/em>,vol. 11, no. 2, 1972, pp. 9\u201317.https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/pdf\/1225046.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Ad9a4ad2d47c268d1 Ginsberg, Allen. Howl and Other Poems. <\/em>San Francisco, City Lights Books, 1956.Kane, Daniel. We Saw the Light: Conversations Between the New American Cinema and Poetry<\/em>. Iowa City, University of Iowa Press, 2009.<\/p>\n King, Susan. \u201cThe Evolution of Charlie Chaplin\u2019s Tramp.\u201d Los Angeles Times<\/em>, 24 Jan. 2014, http:\/\/articles.latimes.com\/2014\/jan\/24\/entertainment\/la-et-mn-charlie-chaplin-tramp-clas Reid, Mark. \u201cCinema, Poetry, Pedagogy: Montage as Metaphor.\u201d British Film Institute<\/em>, vol. 4, no. 1, 2005, pp. 60\u201369. https:\/\/files.eric.ed.gov\/fulltext\/EJ847242.pdf<\/p>\n Tyler, Parker. Underground Film: A Critical History<\/em>. New York, Grove Press, Inc., 1969.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Claire Howard Read the writer’s comments and bio Download this essay Allen Ginsberg\u2019s landmark poem \u201cHowl\u201d has come to epitomize society\u2019s perception of the Beat Generation in 1950s America. The movement stands as a symbol of counterculture, completely unabashed in its renunciation of the establishment, violence and war, particularly as it applied to America\u2019s involvement […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4801,"featured_media":0,"parent":12881,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12891"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4801"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12891"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13208,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12891\/revisions\/13208"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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