Howl Revisited

Does anyone read Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl anymore? It made quite an impact when Ginsberg first read it at the Six Gallery reading in San Francisco in the year 1955. He was one of many poets reading that night, that included Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Michael McClure and Philip Lamantia, with Kenneth Rexroth as the Master of Ceremonies. Ginsberg’s reading came like a thunderclap that cleared the sky and spoke the unspeakable. As described by McClure: 

 

"Ginsberg read on to the end of the poem, which left us standing in wonder, or cheering and wondering, but knowing at the deepest level that a barrier had been broken, that a human voice and body had been hurled against the harsh wall of America...." 

 

The next year, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, himself a fine poet and owner of City Lights bookstore and the publishing house City Lights Books, published Ginsberg’s poem and the next year, they were all taken to trial in 1957 for disseminating “obscene literature,” but the judge finally ruled that the poem was not obscene. In many ways, it indeed tore a hole in the wall of the prim and proper 50’s mainstream culture, helping to launch the Beat movement, initiate live poetry readings throughout the country, partner with jazz in its counter-culture ways, bring homosexuality out of the closet and give poetry permission to speak in different rhythms and with more daring. 

 

The poem was partly inspired by a vision Ginsberg had looking out a n apartment window in San Francisco and seeing the façade of the Sir Francisco Drake hotel wrapped in fog as the monstrous face of a child-eating demon from the Old Testament (Leviticus) named Moloch. In Part 2 of the original poem, he intones (excerpts): 

 

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their 

  Skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?…

Moloch! Moloch! Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the

crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch the vastsStone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!

Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose

blood is running money!…

 

On he goes for some 11 more stanzas. 

 

In 1997, I was leading some meetings in my school about the creeping advent of computers in schools and tired of all the rational talk and rationalizing excuses, I followed Ginsberg’s idea of letting my outrage out and giving free voice to my anger about how we were choosing to let the machines “eat up the children’s brains and imagination.” Ah, little did I know what was to come. Now Moloch has fully arrived in its most monstrous form with the demon of AI stomping through schools like Godzilla while we calmly say, “Well, it does some cool things.” Instead of updating it yet again, I’ll present my version from almost 30 years ago. My little slingshot against the Goliath. I suggest reading it out loud with passion and rhythmic energy to get the full effect. Heck, read it out loud at the next school board meeting! You have my full permission.

 

HOWL REVISITED (with apologies to Allen Ginsberg) 

                © 1997 Doug Goodkin

 

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by techno-madness, overfed calmly Gap-clothed, 

surfing through the electronic web at dawn looking for a hit

pseudo-hip youngsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of cyber-space,

who riches and bleary-eyed sat up staring into the cold blue light of flickering images contemplating Windham Hill stress-busting muzak

who bared their brains to pentium chips in Silicon Valley and saw fractalled angels staggering on color screen illuminated

who passed through universities with cold, uncommitted eyes ignoring Blake

who ate sushi in forced-air rooms and purgatoried their torsos in Nautilus work-outs

who talked continuously seventy hours on cellular phones of softwares and hypercards and hard drives and rams and megabytes

who were fried over endless circuits amid vomit of empty verse & mindless clutter of titillating porn

who prayed to icons & wandered lost in drunken hallucinations of Virtual Reality

whole intellects disengaged, who gave up metaphorical and metaphysical musing, gutted their guitars, gave Coltrane away in garage sales

what sphinx of silicon bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?

Moloch! Clean, dry ugliness! Children screaming inside numbed by 100,00 acts of television violence ! Moloch! Whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch! Whose eye is a thousand blind Windows TM Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out from a screen!

Visions! Omens! Miracles! Ecstasies! gone down the American river polluted with computer solvents!

Speed! Progress! Information! Togetherness! Accessibility! Power! the whole boatload of techno-bullshit hurtling us towards oblivion

While the children watch it all with wild eyes.