They were ranting and roaring and howling.”Īt 29, relatively new to San Francisco and bearing the psychic scars that had landed him in two mental hospitals, Ginsberg was the last and least-known in the five-poet lineup. “This event was breaking ground in that there were people who said, ’Let’s read in this funky art gallery’ and were the opposite of silent. In the years after he wrote \"Howl,\" Ginsberg alternately described the poem as a song of spiritual liberation, a homage to art, an ode to gay love and a lament for his mentally ill mother. “Poets now read all over the place, but at that time they didn’t - if they were famous, they maybe read at the Museum of Modern Art,” said Jonah Raskin, author of “American Scream: Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and the Making of the Beat Generation.” Allen Ginsberg reads a poem to the assembled crowd in Washington Square Park in this Aug. Admirers regard it as a turning point that took poetry out of the Ivory Tower - creating space for dissent and presaging the youthful rebellion that inspired folk music, sexually explicit performance art and more recently, poetry slams. The wine-soaked gathering also featured poets Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Phil Lamantia and Phil Whalen and was hosted by elder statesman Kenneth Rexroth.
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