Howl Allen Ginsberg

This poem in was a fascinating read, to say the least. After reading it twice I still feel like there are a lot of things I’ve missed. I’m having flash backs to “The Wasteland”.  I’m going to try to piece together what I did understand for this blog.

In the first section of this poem Ginsberg is discussing all of the people who he believes were the “best minds of his generation”. These people are far from anything mainstream society would consider “good”. In the second section Ginsberg describes a creature named Moloch, who (according to my computer’s dictionary) was “a Canaanite idol to whom children were fed”. I assume from my reading that Moloch is what has created these people that Ginsberg discusses in the first section. In the third section the speaker of the poem identifies with someone named Carl Solomon. I see this as Ginsberg’s way of identifying with all of the people mentioned in the first section. I did research Carol Solomon, and I found that he and Ginsberg met while they were both being treated in a mental institution in New York.

In many ways this poem reminds me of “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman. Ginsberg paints a picture of various individuals, and then seems to say that he identifies with all of them. And that he shares their experiences, just like he shares the experience of being locked in a mental hospital with Carl Solomon. All of these people make up the world that Ginsberg resides in; therefore they are more real to him than the dysfunctional society that created them. Just like Whitman identified with the runaway slave, Ginsberg relates to the destitute, the drug addicts, and even the pedophiles. Both of these poets also seem to be pointing out the flaws in the system that runs our society.