1

The Pure Products of America / Go Crazy1: A Study of the Music and Locale that Influenced Ginsbergs Form in Howl.

In the years directly preceding and following the publication of Howl and Other Poems (1956),2 Allen

Ginsberg was asked many times about the origin of his writing style, and the method according to

which he wrote. Literary content considered obscene obstinately draws attention to itself through

the very nature of its controversiality, but Ginsbergs unapologetic crafting of different poetic forms

to directly affect his subject matter meant that the very structure of his poetry became equally

contentious. In a storm of controversy and debate,3 his poetrys literary merit was contested as

much as its content, and as such Ginsberg was called on to explain his method of writing.

Two separate explanations that Ginsberg gave, in 1958 and 1955 respectively, are crucially

important in understanding not only the sensibility of his poetry and the culture it represented, but

also the relationship between Ginsbergs method and musicality. The first explanation in question

was written in a letter to John Hollander, in direct response to a criticism of the collection. Ginsberg

wrote: After sick and tired of short line free verse as not expressive enough, not swinging enough,

cant develop a powerful enough rhythm, I simply turned aside, accidently to writing part one of

Howl.4 This offhand description perpetuates the casual, experimentalist attitude so important to the

Beat mythology. The mythology that surrounds the poem was only partly true, but encouraged by

Ginsberg at this time as a kind of aura of authentication for the content poeticised in his collection:

content that revolved around creative and artistic souls and their desire to claim their own position

in society.

1 For Elsie William Carlos Williams Selected Poems, ed. Charles Tomlinson (2000), p.55 2 Allen Ginsberg Selected Poems 1947-1995, ed. Allen Ginsberg (1996). All quotations of Ginsbergs poetry are from this collection, and page numbers will be given in the text 3 Howl on Trial: The Battle for Free Expression, ed. Bill Morgan, Nancy J. Peters (2006) 4 Ibid, p. 87

344 / 344

2

Ginsberg manipulated the truth into an idealised, reduced form that neatly promoted the

concept of this pioneering counter-culture. Whilst correct in his summation, Ginsberg omits any

mention of the struggle and difficulty that went into creating Howl, and does not mention that he

worked determinedly and steadily for years in search of a type of poetry that enabled him to express

his ideas fully. Any admission of this studiousness and toil would have dissipated the mythology of

the Beat lifestyle. At this time Ginsberg consciously distanced himself from academic institutions and

this independence became a proud point of identity not only for Ginsberg but also for the millions of

people who were heavily influenced by Beat literature and the lifestyle that was portrayed within it.

It was enough for the Beat writers, at that time, to propagate their mythology without challenging it,

because underneath it all lay exciting poetry. After all, as Kerouac wrote to Ginsberg in 1963: What

have we accomplished? Good new poetry, that oughta be enough. Charming bedraggled little

princes everywhere on accounta you...5

Ginsbergs style in Howl and Other Poems was not an accident and did not result from

spurning the literary traditions that directly preceded it. Free verse, as he saw it, was the only path

of prosodic experiment6 and provided a flexible opportunity for Ginsberg to manipulate the form of

his poetry so that it did not restrict him but rather worked to his advantage. The nature of

experiment, however, meant that the process was developed and calibrated over a number of years,

and Ginsbergs first two collections of poems, Empty Mirror: Gates of Wrath (1948-51) and The

Green Automobile (1953-54), are a clear part of the ancestry of Howl and Other Poems, contradicting

Ginsbergs explanation that he accidently wrote Howl. Ginsberg can be seen tightening his craft

and developing the expansion of free verse into longer lines which could hold multiple rhythms that

varied according to the content. The poem comes before the form, in the sense that the form grows

out of the attempt of somebody to say something, wrote T.S. Eliot, and Howl grew out of wanting

to write something distinctly American, and yet also directly personal. Ginsbergs poetry contains

5 Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, The Letters, ed. Bill Morgan, David Stanford (2010), p. 472 6 Howl on Trial: The Battle for Free Expression, p. 86

393 / 737

3

American iconography and landscape with a pervading sense of individuality, and his form emulates

this duality in that it resembles traditional American free verse as well as Ginsbergs personal

exploration of prosody through musical experimentation.

Ginsberg chooses to centre his poem in the language and rhythm that he heard on the

streets of the cities of America, whilst also at the same time allowing himself to be influenced by

Americas music. This dissertation aims to explore beyond the Beat mythology of how Ginsberg

developed his poetic method in Howl, arguing for more substantive consideration of the influence

of music in Ginsbergs form. The association between Ginsbergs style and jazz music has been

explored, but relatively under-examined in Ginsberg studies are the effects of blues music and early

country music, where the method of counting syllables and functional conversational tone carries

over into Ginsbergs work. Ginsbergs poetry is clearly inspired by music in terms of its sound

patterns and aural qualities. This dissertation will argue that Ginsbergs form in Howl and Other

Poems derives from the influence of William Carlos Williamss free verse form and ideas of reality

and locale, combined with contemporary American music such as blues and country. In blues music

particularly, Ginsberg seemed to identify a style fluid enough to contain multiple ideas and rhythms

whilst at the same time relating to an American theme, writing to his brother in 1955:

I have been looking at early blues forms and think will apply this form of

elliptical semisurrealist imagery [that he was writing at the time] to rhymed

blues type lyrics. Nobody but Audens written any literary blues forms, his

are more like English ballads, not purified Americana. Blues forms also

provide a real syncopated metre, with many internal variants and changes

of form in midstream like conversational thought.7

7 From a letter to his brother 1955, Howl Trial The Battle for Free Expression, p.33

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4

This second explanation is vital in understanding the complexity of the poetry in Howl and Other

Poems, but the trouble with it originating in casual correspondence means that it remains largely

unsubstantiated and vague. Although this quotation seems to hold many of the answers relating to

the construction of Ginsbergs poetry, here Ginsberg can be accused of propagating romanticised

mythology that satisfies only superficially. Purified Americana and Audens apparent dissociation

with it are left entirely unexplained. In order to evaluate significantly Ginsbergs method, one must

challenge Ginsbergs tendency to use evocative phrases, in order to move past the constructed

folklore that hinders more seriously academic study. Instead of accepting Ginsbergs neat rhetoric or

assuming his credibility, deconstruction provides considerable insight into Ginsbergs true writing

process. For instance, the phrase purified Americana appears patriotic and self-explanatory, but on

further consideration is paradoxical; an uneasy association. Purification of an object suggests

manufacture, and if Ginsberg is linking manufacture with a national context that should feature in

poetry, then he is suggesting that artificiality becomes integral to poetic content. But Ginsberg is also

using purified in a different sense, relating it to conversational thought; thought devoid of

manipulation and construction, as though using the word as a synonym for authentic or genuine. In

this sense, he undermines artificiality as the antithesis of purity, without acknowledging that any

attempt to write blues music himself would inherently be manufactured and lacking in authenticity.

His reference to Auden suggests that whilst Ginsberg aims for authenticity and reality in his

poetry, he understands the importance of construction of form in harmony with content as a

purification of that content. Although Ginsberg is unspecific about which of Audens poems he finds

to be similar to early blues forms, poems like Audens Roman Wall Blues exhibit the same

commonality and humour as many early blues songs. The lines: Over the heather the wet wind

blows / I've lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose8 demonstrate a connection with blues artists like

Robert Johnson, but the sticking point for Ginsberg is the relationship to a vague English sensibility.

8 W.H. Auden Collected Poems, ed. Edward Mendelson, (2006), p. 136

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Ginsberg recognises Audens association with the blues form, but separates him from his mystery

Americana. It appears that Ginsberg believes that the purified Americana which is his objective is

the complete melding of form as a constructed artifice with entirely American context. The blues

and, it will be argued, country music provide Ginsberg with an American way to construct his

poetry, moving further away from any association with English balladry and lyrics. Here Ginsberg

uses nationality to answer questions of authenticity and purity without acknowledging that this is

still an uneasy resolution. This is not a matter of being politically correct about authenticity, writes

Michael Gray. The whole question of authenticity in black music is highly complex and

contentious.9

What can be taken from this quotation, however, is Ginsbergs identification with the

importance of carefully modulating and varied rhythms in song and poetry. Timothy Steele writes

that Ginsberg and his contemporaries displayed an antipathy to meter which grew to be especially

vehement, and it became almost universal when it was reinforced by iconoclasms of the sixties.10

However, Ginsberg did not have an antipathy to metre but rather relied on variations on, or

deviations from, traditional metres. It will be argued that these variations on metre came directly

from the syncopated metre in early blues lyrics, built on a sturdy foundation of short line free verse

in the style of William Carlos Williams. Ginsberg began writing in the style of Williams, but then

mutated the lineation to allow longer lines to be filled with semisurrealist imagery,11 expressly

using Williamss shorter line to structure his work. To achieve this end consideration of metre and

rhythm becomes crucial if underlying, in much the same way that Walt Whitmans poetry, whilst

appearing free and sprawling, is actually carefully modulated. If Walt Whitman as a poet was the

president of regulation,12 Ginsberg was his vice president.

9 Michael Gray, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia (2006), p. 560 10 Timothy Steele, Missing Measures: Modern Poetry and the Revolt against Meter (1990), p. 281 11 Letter to his brother 1955, Howl Trial The Battle for Free Expression, p.33 12 Missing Measures, p.191

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II

The most prominent literary influence on Ginsbergs poetry was that of his mentor, William Carlos

Williams, whose early modernist poetry incorporated many of the same themes found in the

younger poets work. The importance of localism in art was discussed by Williams as early as 1920,

when he wrote in his short-lived journal Contact that for poetry to establish itself in time and place

demanded essential contact between words and the locality that breeds them, in this case

America.13 In much the same way that Ginsberg strives for the Americana of early blues forms to

be implemented into his poetics so that his poetry became part of America, Williams also identifies

that when this contact is correctly utilised the poem becomes addressed to American reality;

presenting a locale as a frozen part of temporal movement. Williams is aware of the fragility of this

quest for American reality, beginning his poem For Elsie with: The pure products of America / Go

crazy14, a phrase which could have been on Ginsbergs mind when he wrote of purified Americana.

However, Williams was extremely defensive of the progression of this dynamic between poetic

content and localism. A poem such as Eliots The Waste Land was viewed by Williams as a setback

to American poetry an atom bomb because it was static, rooted in a cultural and historical

framework that was at odds with Williamss progressive new art form [...] rooted in the locality

which should give it fruit.15 Eliot wrote that his poem was designed in a mythical method: of

drawing parallels between ancient and modern worlds as a way of ordering the futility and anarchy

which is contemporary history.16 In writing according to this method Eliots roots become more

spectral and infinite, not representative of a certain time or place, outside of temporal or spatial

realities, something which Williams felt damaged modernist poetry which drew strength from these

features. Whilst Eliot wrote The Waste Land, Williams was leader of his own colossal surge

13 Williams Carlos Williams, Contact Journal December 1920 14 Williams Carlos Williams Selected Poems, p. 55 15 Williams Autobiography 16 Selected Prose of T.S. Eliot, ed. Frank Kermode (1975), p. 177-8

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towards the finite;17 towards the use of finite verbs and movement from stasis; poetry that

reflected visible truths of America; poetry that moved when America did.

It is difficult to understand precisely what Williams envisions when he speaks of the finite,

but the context within which he uses it the movement of the seasons into approaching spring

suggests that he values it within the concept of temporal progression, a movement which, although

developing and continuing, is assured and concrete, limited by circumstances of space and time. He

uses finite verbs to move his poetry within the fixed spatial lineation he creates. In another sense,

however, he uses finite to mean definite, realistic, or grounded. In his review of Hart Cranes The

Bridge (1930) he criticises Crane for reaching beyond what he knew, outside of the finite: He was

fascinated by a long, billowy music which deceived him very often [...] His eyes seem to me often to

have been blurred by vision when they should have been held hard, as hard as he could hold them,

on the object. In this criticism of Crane is inherent the dangers that faced Ginsberg when creating

poetry that aspired to music. The rhythm is by definition all encompassing, but Williams identifies

Cranes fatal flaw as being deceived by the potential of rhythm into forgetting his limitations as a

poet. In Williamss opinion, where Crane should be dealing with the object, and perhaps here one

could substitute the finite, he negates himself by moving outside of what is known and as such his

words become blurred and meaningless.

Ginsbergs identification with blues music meant that he escaped the same fate in Howl and

Other Poems by using the internal rhythms and variations that he saw in early blues songs. A line

from Sunflower Sutra serves as an example (p. 60):

The oily water on the river mirrored the dark sky, sun sank on top of final

Frisco peaks, no fish in that stream, no hermit in those mounts, just

17 Williams Carlos Williams Selected Poems, p. 45

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ourselves rheumy-eyed and hung over like old bums on the riverbank, tired

and wily.

Here, Ginsberg uses regular commas to separate different syntactical clauses. A pattern is

established and followed with only minor variations. The first two sections of this line, separated

into segments by a comma, parallel each other with six stresses in each clause, but there is a subtle

variation in syntax. The first section ends with a double stress in red sky, an effect not mimicked

with Frisco peaks which reads as a cretic. The effect of this small change is the excitement of

exception within a pre-existing structure. The next two independent clauses no fish in that stream

and no hermit in those mounts feature an exact syntactic parallel because the reader repeats the

same stress patterns when reading that stream and those mounts. The fifth segment of the same

line, just ourselves rheumy-eyed and hung over like old bums on the riverbank, breaks away from

the parallelism established in the first part of that line, and as such extends past what the reader

expects, with words hanging over, like the condition of the bums described. This singular line is an

example of an instance where it would be easy to become deceived by music to distraction, but

Ginsberg creates tension between the parallel clauses through tiny variations, meaning the rhythm

does not become complacent because of a sense of conflict continually challenging expectations.

Williamss ideas of localism forming a new art form of modernist poetry also encouraged

experimentation in presentation and lineation, and Ginsbergs early style is almost entirely dictated

by Williamss. Williamss style seems influenced by the emerging freedom of 1920s American society

which itself was broadening in areas such as transport and media, in the materialisation of

motorcars and cinemas, both of which worked their way into Williams life and poetry. The lineation

in Williamss verse in his collection Spring and All (1923) accentuates this transitional quality, using

the movement of a vehicle to stimulate the poem. In the poem he later called Right of Way,

Williams places the two words I saw on an independent line, using the first person for the dramatic

361 / 2825

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exposition of experiences being related to the reader by someone who perceives them. Through this

device Williams gives the poem a plot, projecting its rhythm shape into narrative. What content is

placed in the poem is determined by whether it is seen by the narrator set in a fixed space and time.

Williams ends the poem:

The supreme importance

of this nameless spectacle

sped me by them

without a word

Why bother where I went?

for I went spinning on the

four wheels of my car

along the wet road until

I saw a girl with one leg

over the rail of a balcony18

Williams uses his car as a device to cultivate an illusion of spontaneity, following an

improvised route that inevitably leads him past people living their lives that he views from his

window. It also means that the reader feels a sense of immediacy in experience when reading it. The

transitional element of forward motion means that the poem itself is a series of transitions as he

sees things in passing without judgement. He presents each person he sees in a series of cinematic

18 Williams Carlos Williams Selected Poems, p. 52

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frames, as each couplet of disjointed lines flashes past the reader as though one were also in

motion. Each frame features a gesture or a motion of smiling, laughing or looking, but the narrator is

only privy to their actions, not their motivations. Their namelessness and wordlessness lends them

to universality but they remain tethered to a certain time and place because the poet saw them as

he drove. This quality of observation and universality is directly important to Ginsbergs identity as a

poet, as a witness and storyteller. Charles O. Hartman writes about Williamss poetry that It isolates

an individual experience so as to order it and give it significance; at the same time it remains true to

the incessant world that does not sanction the isolation of one action or perception from another.19

Although referring primarily to Williams, Ginsbergs poetry in Howl and Other Poems also finds an

order in disorder, but this order is subjective and shared with the reader through his viewpoint.

Although Ginsberg would also use the words I saw to great effect, the act of observation

does not necessarily bind one to reality. In this instance, Williamss use of I saw becomes the

impetus for both the content and method of the poem because he sticks to the sense literally. If one

cannot see something using ones eyes, then this conjecture is not added to the poem. As such, the

poem has one focal point after another with the same lack of bias as plain sight, although as

discussed below, Williams plays on the idea that the eye can be mistaken. Ginsberg too uses what he

can see as focal points that allow Howl to move all over America, and this keeps his poem in

movement from stasis. Ginsbergs seeing eye is much nearer to his friend Bob Dylans than it is to

Williamss, yet Dylan pushes further in becoming an almost holy seer, often describing things in

terms of reality but not limited to it. Williamss eye is bound to reality and functions as a normal eye

would. Dylan uses his position as songwriter so that his eye may see figuratively: grounding his

prophecy firmly in concrete absolutes, and dramatically playing on Williamss statement that there

are no ideas but in things. In A Hard Rains a-Gonna Fall(1963), Dylan sings:

I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it

19 Charles O. Hartman, Free Verse: An Essay on Prosody (1980), p. 97

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I saw a black branch with blood that kept dripping

[...]

I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken.

In this song, the repetition pushes the song through extreme and twisted imagery whilst

always returning to the singer, who moves into the role of seer and who proclaims his visions to the

world. These visions stand as apocalyptic warnings of what will happen in the future. When Ginsberg

heard A Hard Rains a-Gonna Fall, he broke down and cried, because he felt that the torch had

been passed20 to a new generation, as though the burden of seeing had been shared. Both Dylan

and Ginsberg see American society as on the verge of tumbling, but whilst Dylan sees a continuation

of this fall to the point of apocalypse, Ginsberg chronicles the evidence of a fractured America that

he sees on the streets of the cities in which he lives. Ginsberg aligns himself with Dylan as his direct

predecessor, and as such Ginsbergs use of I saw in Howl is utilised in both senses: as a remnant of

Williamss observation of reality and spatial movement from stasis, but also as a surveyor of more

abstract ideas based in things as Dylan would later further expand it.

The first line of Howl, begins I saw, immediately establishing Ginsbergs role as the

communicator; the one who sees what others do not and who is sharing it in verse. Ginsberg sees

from the inside as part of the same environment, and uses this connection to a specific reality as an

artifice to structure his poem: a technique of purifying or manufacturing localised content using the

honesty of vision as construction. It is here that Ginsbergs unexplained phrase purified Americana

can arguably be established, as the purification Ginsbergs artificial structure is as American and

personalised as its content. In Howl, Ginsberg propagates as well as instigates: he is the eyes that

see, but also the mouth that howls. The pieces of narrative are given flexibility through this device to

be arranged as a collage of snapshots in much the same way as Williamss Right of Way, together

20 Martin Scorsese, No Direction Home (Film 2005)

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portraying and publicising an urban citizenry teeming with life and death, outside of the confines of

regular American society.

The final image of the girl on the rail of the balcony in Williamss poem lingers, and for a

moment has the qualities of an amputee as the reader lingers on her one leg. The lineation used

actually manipulates the way one views the content as reader, causing one to consider the effect of

splitting the line in such a way. For a second she becomes broken or deformed, and it is not until the

next line that she is reassembled, as though her human frailty was briefly exposed and life continues.

As though Williams is demonstrating the inherent potential for weakness in humanity through the

strength of considered lineation, the choice of ending the line where he does asks the reader to

think further, explicitly disrupting the rhythm of the image to present an unseen stark truth.

Ginsberg used Williamss starkly cut up lines in his own early poetry when trying to find a

balance between imagery and form. In Siesta in Xbalba(1954), he uses similar line structure to

Williamss Right of Way, but the content of the poem is far more abstract and indecipherable, as he

moves from a typical New York party into realms of illusions and ancient associations that when

added to the disjointed flow of each line mean reading the poem is difficult and laborious. Simply

adding the visual element of Williamss free verse to his own poetry makes it feel convoluted as too

many grand ideas are chopped up into lines which struggle to present the images effectively, the

abruptness of each line change disrupting the idea the reader is trying to imagine. For example, the

lines

blind face of animal transcendency

over the sacred ruin of the world

dissolving into the sunless wall of a blackened room

on a time-rude pyramid rebuilt

in the bleak flat night of Yucatan (p.33)

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whilst presenting what Ginsberg previously calls the madness of oblivion, do not make a connection

with either the reader or the poet, as ideas are conveyed in lines overloaded with interpretations.

Poetry should not necessarily be easily reducible but the modifying of different ideas in this extract

negates any real meaning. Animalising an abstract notion such as transcendency even without the

addition of a blind face is inaccessible almost to distraction. Combined with the stacking of lines,

Ginsberg can be accused of losing sight of the things which Williams recommends ideas being

grounded in.

Further in the same poem, however, Ginsbergs use of metre and lineation effectively

creates a verse which shows that despite verses such as above, where he spirals into confusion, he

was beginning to grasp Williamss short line technique even though it did not offer him the perfect

template for his ideas, which would flourish in the longer line he eventually developed.

And a long journey unaccomplished

yet, on antique seas

rolling in the grey barren dunes under

the worlds waste of light

towards ports of childish geography

the rusty ship will

harbour in... (p. 35)

Here the successful lineation simulates the rolling of a ship over waves as the beginnings of

the lines regularly alternates in indentation, and the allusions to the progression of times effect on

an undying dream the geography that appears childish as though imagined as a child and

retained, or the ship that has grown rusty whilst it waits is accessible to a reader. The delay of the

256 / 4407

14

word yet onto the second line leaves the journey relegated to the past, unaccomplished, until the

restoration of hope that one day the trip will be undertaken.

Barry Miles, the writer of a Ginsberg biography to which Ginsberg contributed and gave his

approval wrote that The Bricklayers Lunch Hour was one of his most successful early poems.21

The poem itself was a rewrite of a prose piece Ginsberg had written. Miles writes of how Ginsberg

changed prose into verse: Sometimes he arranged them by counting the syllables, sometimes by the

breath lengths, and sometimes he just balanced the lines visually on the page.22 This was an

important period of experimentation for Ginsberg because from one excerpt of prose he could

potentially create several different poems. This method of arrangement also risked being simply too

diffuse, as with several stanzas in poems such as Siesta in Xbalba and Song. The fascination with

breath controlling the way the poem was formed, however, was a technique which Ginsberg used to

great effect in Howl and Other Poems once he began to diverge from short line verse, using instead

varying long and short lines. Moving ahead from simply stacking the poetic lines on top of each other

as he did with The Bricklayers Lunch Hour, Ginsberg clearly begins to consider the aural affect of

his lineation and the control that poetic form has on the power of the piece.

As Ginsberg wrote in 1958, the longer lines build up so that I have to let off steam by

building a longer climactic line in which there is a jazzy ride.23 Ginsberg once again avoids serious

poetic analysis by using a simple musical analogy, but in keeping with this analogy, Ginsberg

arguably transforms the reader into an instrument because the rhythm is created by the drawing of

the readers every breath. In this way the reader becomes complicit in the frenzy being described by

the content and created by the form. The jazziness of the ride is further created by the careful

consideration Ginsberg affords to each line, contrary to the idealism of Kerouac and his

spontaneous bop prosody. Ginsberg manages to hold on to the purity of spontaneous originality by

21 Barry Miles, Allen Ginsberg: Beat Poet (1989), p.87 22 Ibid, p.143 23 Howl on Trial, p. 87

381 / 4788

15

utilising sound tempo and rhythm all crucial to both music and poetry as well as the excitingly

impulsive association of words and surrealist images which together directly shaped Howl. Any full

line from Part I of Howl provides an excellent example of this merging of musicality with surrealist

but inherently truthful imagery :

who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to

holy Bronx on Benzedrine until the noise of the wheels and children

brought them shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all

drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo, (p. 49)

This line contains elements which are universal to the entire poem and which show Ginsbergs

precision of craft. The line contrasts the domesticity of children visiting the zoo with the torturous

experience of the junkies on the same subway train, and by the end of the line it is not clear whether

Ginsberg is referring to the Bronx Zoo or the urban zoo of the junkie. The alliteration of the line is

the violent stressing of multiple bs as they pass the readers lips, reaching a crescendo of brutality

by battered bleak of brain as though the battering is being performed by the reader, and the reader

becomes one of the external forces outside of the brain; part of the noise. The line is allowed to run

without any mediation from punctuation which replicates the continuous motion of the subway car

crossing the city, and the line features the scope of New York as it passes through just like a railway

line. The line eventually moves from location into the mental world of the junkie, descending just

like the effect of a long jazz solo growing wilder until ending with a new breath and onto a new

movement.

It is in lines like this one that Ginsberg asserts his own creative power onto free verse. The

repeated emphasis on the who that begins each new line provides an anchor for each line as well

as a cyclical motion that returns the focus of each line back to the finite. The syntax is incantatory

and the accumulation of parallel subordinate clauses are held together by the insistent rhythm. The

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action is told through the static of the person identified as who, the emphasis being that the

constant in this poem of chaos are the best minds: the vulnerable and the suffering who are always

present and whose humanity can become forgotten in the litany of life. The anaphora is relentless

and throbbing, each new line representing the beginning of a new logical and rhythmic unit, a

consistent beginning of each new deep breath. The articulation of the reader is really the poem

articulating itself through its design; through its punctuation and syntax and repetition which

demands cooperation and surrender from its reader. Ginsberg wrote that the only principle of his

long line was that each line has to be contained within the elastic of one breath.24

Through this choice of style, Ginsberg gives the poem its own energy and it powers through

its lines, the separate semantics creating tension between each other which keeps the poem in

constant motion even within a single line:

who wandered around and around at midnight in the railway yard

wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts,

who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow

toward lonesome farms in grandfather night (p.50)

The repetition of boxcars in the second poetic line demonstrates the movement of rhythm in a line

by using the lack of movement of vocabulary: the sticking effect of the repetition of stresses

provides an internal variant of rhythm which is different from the line directly above it, even though

the evocation of the railway yard preceding it is what inspires the multitude of boxcars.

24 Letter to John Hollander 1958, Howl on Trial, p.87

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III

The structures of all three parts of Howl lend themselves to focusing Ginsbergs feelings into an

effective, resonant form that makes the reader responsive not only to the words but to the

experience of responding; an architecture that channels emotions even as it creates new ones. The

experience of listening to Ginsberg read his poem aloud in San Francisco shortly before publication

has not only gone down in history as Beat legend but also sent the audience into a frenzy. The

directly relevant and honest content surely contributed to this reaction, but Ginsbergs reading of

the poem, like a holy roller, manipulated the audiences response by building up energy through

the control of his breath, systematically releasing tension when he desired it. It is interesting to note

what Ginsberg said about Bob Dylan when interviewed for Martin Scorseses documentary on the

singer, No Direction Home (2005). When talking about a young Dylan performing in 1964, he said:

What struck me was he was at one, or he became identical, with his breath. And Dylan had become

a column of air, so to speak, at certain moments, where his total physical and mental focus was this

single breath coming out of his body. He had found a way in public to be almost like a shaman with

all of his intelligence and consciousness focused on his breath. It can be argued that the form of

Howl, considered by many to be simply a drug-fuelled tirade or an undisciplined rebellion25, is

actually a technique to turn the reader into a column of air. Its improvisational tone is secondary to

the reflection of consciousness and natural speech within the lineation that means any willing reader

is consumed by the form by becoming identical with it; all physicality and mentality focuses on the

words being exhaled, thus creating uncontaminated expression.

The connection with music is apparent even without the obvious association with Bob Dylan:

breath control is vitally important for singers and players of woodwind or brass instruments alike.

Practicality is not Ginsbergs only concern however: he builds upon the column of air in Howl in a

25 See court transcripts from obscenity trials, Howl On Trial: The Battle For Free Expression

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way unprecedented in his previous work. The column of air, regulated by the metre, becomes the

foundation of his punctuation and lineation as he relies on the elastic nature of breath. In this way,

Ginsberg becomes a songwriter akin to Hank Williams (hereafter referred to by his full name to

avoid confusion with William Carlos Williams).

In his 1969 poem, Northwest Passage, Ginsberg writes of Hank Williams chanting to

country.26 A key element to Hank Williamss songwriting was the precision of the placement of

syllables within a metre, meticulously arranged so that they held together entire verses phonetically

and rhythmically, creating the chant-like effect that Ginsberg identifies. Each line dictates where the

singer must draw breath and the lineation is controlled by the placement of syllables, and it

becomes clear upon analysis that each syllable has been decided upon by how it affects the lineation

as well as how it sounds in the mouth of the singer. Dylan speaks of Hank Williamss songs as being

the archetype rules of poetic songwriting. He goes on to say that the syllables of his lyrics are

divided up so they make perfect mathematical sense.27 A useful example is the song Lost Highway

(1949), since Dylan was recorded singing it in the documentary Dont Look Back (1965). Each four

lined verse of the song is made up of three lines of ten syllables, with the third line of each

containing nine syllables:

I'm a rollin' stone all alone and lost

For a life of sin I have paid the cost

When I pass by all the people say

Just another guy on the lost highway

26 Allen Ginsberg, Collected Poems (London 2009), p. 527 27 Bob Dylan, Chronicles Vol 1 (2004), p. 96

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As the song continues the lyrics become more desperate and both the third line of the third verse

and the first line of the final verse contain eight syllables, creating a tonal shift that is inherent in the

song design:

Now boys dont start to ramblin' round

On this road of sin are you sorrow bound

Take my advice or you'll curse the day

You started rollin' down that lost highway

The tonal shift is one of despondence created by the correspondence between lyric and metre. As

the gap in the syllable count results in an extension of the existing words in the line such as advice

in the third line to fit into the metre already established, the lengthening of monosyllabic words

creates a wailing effect that alters the tone. Hank Williamss advice becomes a moan of despair as

futility is expressed directly on the word ad-vice, which becomes stretched and emphasised.

Syllabic irregularity as a device can be recognised in country music, but it can also be argued

that Ginsberg subverted aural expectations to create his own variations within a pre-existing metre,

adding a sense of conversational irregularity similar to those working in country and blues forms.

These internal variants can be found working in Part II of Howl, where Ginsberg evokes Moloch:

Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running

money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a

cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb! (p. 54)

Here Ginsberg uses parallel phrasing to establish a rhythmical pattern as the template remains the

same each time: Moloch whose _____ is (a) ______, but although the number of stresses remain

the same, the placement of stresses of the final adjective and noun differ each time. This creates

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unpredictable shifts within a prescribed metre, producing a rippling or moving effect that ignites

Moloch as an entity to a powerful and stirring beast. The patterns of these words define Moloch but

also bring the reader to exclamation in a vivid, rhythmical way.

In Dave Hickeys essay The Song in Country Music, the author asks country singer Harlan

Howard for an example of Hank Williamss song writing that best demonstrates his craft. Howard

chooses the first verse of Cold, Cold Heart: He explained that those eight short lines are invisibly

held together by fifteen internal r phonemes. There are triples in the first two lines, four pairs, and

the terminal heart that gives the verse closure.28

I try so hard my dear to show

That youre my every dream.

Yet youre afraid each thing I do

Is just some evil scheme

Some memry from your lonesome past

Keeps us so far apart.

Why cant I free your doubtful mind

And melt your cold, cold heart

As a result the lines not only interrelate with each other on a sub-textual level, but also present a

repetitive aural signature that is picked up by the ear and propels the singer through the lines

through every phoneme, an instinctual effect similar to echolalia. The resulting aural impulse adds to

the literal interpretation of the lines through an internal relation of emotion: the placing of emphasis

on the youre of the first foot of the second and third lines is designed to slot into the sound

pattern but also to connect with the person mentioned in the song.

28 Dave Hickey, The Song in Country Music A New Literary History of America (2009)

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The repetition of the sound creates a limited set of syllables within a simple melody and as a

result simulates the form of a chant. Ginsberg experimented with this effect in Howl, although he

did not become fully influenced by chants such as Buddhist mantras until the mid sixties. In Part III of

Howl that Ginsberg fully explores the use of a repeated fixed base to build up an incantatory

rhythm. The repeated line Im with you in Rockland becomes a mantra for the poet and reader,

cyclically returning each time into Rockland, a psychiatric facility.

This is a direct use of Williamss shorter line working as a base from which longer lines can

extend. The use of the varying short then long line creates the effect of progression: not only are the

lines building up into the jazzy ride that Ginsberg described, they also build up Carl Solomons

descent into madness, as though each line stretching further from the shorter line is Carls mind,

spinning into insanity (p. 55):

Im with you in Rockland

where you must feel strange

Im with you in Rockland

where you imitate the shade of my mother

Im with you in Rockland

Where youve murdered your twelve secretaries

It is here that Ginsberg excels at balancing Williamss style of free verse with his own long line. The

repeated short line works as a reassurance, anchoring Carls insanity and violence to a fixed point

that is always returned to, working similarly to a particular kind of refrain in blues songs. One of the

earliest recorded blues songs is Blind Willie McTells Delia, which always returns to the tragic notion

that Delia has died every third line, working as a repetitive lament that underscores every other

detail in the song:

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Kenny hes in a barroom, drinking from a silver cup.

Delia, shes in the graveyard, and may not never wake up.

Shes all I got is gone.

[...]

Kenny said to the Judge, What may be my fine?

I done told you, poor boy, you got ninety-nine.

Shes all I got is gone.

[...]

High upon the house tops, high as I can see.

Looking at those rounders, looking out for me.

Shes all I got is gone.

The creaking colloquialism of McTells voice emotes a strain of anguish, but it is the form of this song

which allows the full extent of McTells pain to be translated fully. This structure affirms Delias

death at the same time as it affirms McTells life through the pain of his music, as he asserts himself

as storyteller and sufferer. He asserts his control on the form in the same way that Ginsberg does

with free verse, with control behind the pretence of spontaneity: He treats each phrase of his music

with its own rhythmical and melodic nuances [...] As McTells musical stream of consciousness

wanders, so do his bar structures; he may follow a verse of ten bars with another of fourteen.29

James H. Cone writes about the reality of the blues centring its singers in reality: In order to

affirm being, a people must create form for the expression of being and project it with images that

reflect their perceptions of reality. They must take the structure of reality and subject it to the

conditions of life its pain, sorrow and joy.30Although it is debatable that the blues can be defined

as a singular institution that had a direct influence on Ginsbergs work, what this quotation is saying

29 Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, p.449 30 James H. Cone, The Spirituals and the Blues (1972), p. 141

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evocatively is that the blues form must be malleable and influenced by the creators perception of

reality in order to be a pure product of that time and place.

In this sense it is not so different from Williamss pure products of America. It is this that

Ginsberg identifies as the purified Americana of blues music and what influences his form in Howl

and Other Poems; part rhetorical device or prosodic design but more forcefully, a specific perception

of life filtered through the spectrum of pain and joy, and anchored in the present, so unique as to

affirm ones self but also able to conform with the structure of reality and be translatable to others.

In this particular instance, the refrain of Part III of Howl works as a structure of reality from which

Carls insanity extends. Rockland, a mental institution, is as much a part of Ginsbergs identity as it is

Carls, and at one point in time this statement Im with you was literal. Here, it works as a

rhetorical device but doesnt appear any less true. Ginsberg, in repeating this line, is reaffirming his

past as well as his present, structuring his reality and his poem around the conditions of American

locale. As Cone continues, and he could be speaking about Ginsberg and his contemporaries rather

than solely early blues music: The blues are a lived experience, an encounter with the contradictions

of American society but a refusal to be conquered by it.31

31 Ibid, p. 140

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