Howl (poem)

Howl
by Allen Ginsberg
Howl and Other Poems was published in the fall of 1956 as number four in the Pocket Poets Series from City Lights Books.
Written	1955
Country	United States
Language	English

"Howl", also known as "Howl for Carl Solomon", is a poem written by Allen Ginsberg in 1954–1955 and published in his 1956 collection, Howl and Other Poems. The poem is dedicated to Carl Solomon.

Ginsberg began work on "Howl" in 1954. In the Paul Blackburn Audio Collection at the University of California, San Diego, Ginsberg can be heard reading early drafts of the poem to his fellow writing associates.^{[citation needed]} Ginsberg "performed" the poem at the Six Gallery reading in San Francisco in October 1955. Fellow poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Books, who attended the performance, published the work in 1956. Upon the book's release, Ferlinghetti and the City Lights Bookstore manager, Shigeyoshi Murao, were charged with disseminating obscene literature, and both were arrested. On October 3, 1957, Judge Clayton W. Horn ruled that the poem was not obscene.^[1]

Although highly controversial at first, and excluded for years from the academic canon, "Howl" has gradually come to be regarded as a great work of modern American literature.^[2] The poem is also closely associated with the group of writers known as the Beat Generation.^[2][3]