The story
Howl and Other Poems was published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights Books in San Francisco in November 1956 as the fourth in his Pocket Poets series. The title poem, by Allen Ginsberg, begins 'I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness' and unfolds in long, rushing lines that mix street talk, jazz rhythms, drug experience and frank sexual references. Ginsberg had first read it aloud at the Six Gallery in San Francisco on October 7, 1955, in a night that is seen as the birth of the Beat movement.
Ginsberg, born in 1926, was a leading figure of the Beat Generation with Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. In 1957 U.S. Customs seized a shipment of copies and San Francisco police arrested Ferlinghetti for publishing an obscene book. At the trial the judge, Clayton Horn, ruled on October 3, 1957 that the poem was not obscene because it had 'redeeming social importance'. The result opened the way for other books, including those of Henry Miller and William Burroughs, to be published in the United States. The poem sold hundreds of thousands of copies, and Ginsberg remained a public figure through the 1960s.
Why it mattered
- The trial's outcome was a landmark for freedom of expression in American publishing.
- The Beat movement that Howl helped define shaped the counterculture of the 1960s.
- Its open treatment of sexuality and mental distress changed what American poetry could say.
- Its long breath-line style influenced later poets and the spoken word tradition.
Sources
- Howl Britannica
- 'Howl' and the Obscenity Trial Tablet Magazine
- U.S. Customs seizes copies of Allen Ginsberg's Howl History.com
Community notes
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