Composition

The text “HOWL” by Allen Ginsberg is quite complex and might seem difficult to follow at first. For this reason, you should start your analysis by first looking at the overall inner and outer composition.

Summary

The extract from “HOWL” by Allen Ginsberg presents the American society in the 1950s focusing on the destructive forces of capitalism and presenting a decadent society which eventually ends up in conformity.

The poem makes multiple allusions to things the author has lived and experienced: artists, drug addicts, mentally unstable people and political radicals. The poem presents their lives in vivid detail, as outcasts from the point of view of the mainstream conformist society which rejects them.

The poem describes the youths as mad, poor, angry and willing to resort to acts of rebellion, but also talks about their inclination for mysticism, religion and art and their traumas from World War II.

Outer composition

First of all, note that in your textbook you are only given an extract from the first part of the poem (out of three), the extract comprising 70 lines.

Most of the poem is organized in a series of lengthy lines, usually starting with “who” followed by two or more shorter lines. The poem lacks any intentional rhyme, but it does have a specific beat rhythm which you can better grasp if you listen to the poem here[1].

As a general pattern, the poem is structured in long lines with free verse with a varying indentation, the poet’s intention being for each line to be read in one breath with the word ‘who’ becoming like a refrain:

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking
in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating
across the tops of citie...