This weekend I read The Poem that Changed America: "Howl" Fifty Years Later, a collection of essays from poets, academics, and friends of Ginsberg's who recount their initial encouter with Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl." A common thread throughout these accounts is the immense disruption that the poem caused to readers' understanding of themselves, of America, and of poetry. Edited by Jason Shinder, the volume includes essays from Frank Bidart, Sven Birkerts, Amiri Baraka, among others, which testify to the influence of "Howl" in shaping our contemporary sense of human experience. "Howl" speaks to a collective experience of both American dreams of "supernatural ecstasy" and capitalist nightmares of "sexless hydrogen" "Moloch." But, "Howl" testifies to a collective experience that is on the fringe, the edges and extremes in the barely understood realms of human experience, of "Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies!" "dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!" "Howl" validates that "sensitive bullshit" of our bodily, affective experience, resanctifying it as "Holy! Holy! Holy!" "Howl" speaks to those "who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity." Yet, while Ginsberg speaks to those dwelling on the misunderstood edges of 'polite' and 'normal' middle-of-the-road American society, "Howl" also assembles a new community that understands humanity via its connectivity, one bridged in the recognition of experiences and ways of being that are conventionally partitioned off in those "buildings" of "judgment,"the "invincible madhouses" and "incomprehensible prison!" 
Showing posts with label Literary Criticism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Literary Criticism. Show all posts
Monday, March 28, 2011
Reading "Howl"
Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" :
This weekend I read The Poem that Changed America: "Howl" Fifty Years Later, a collection of essays from poets, academics, and friends of Ginsberg's who recount their initial encouter with Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl." A common thread throughout these accounts is the immense disruption that the poem caused to readers' understanding of themselves, of America, and of poetry. Edited by Jason Shinder, the volume includes essays from Frank Bidart, Sven Birkerts, Amiri Baraka, among others, which testify to the influence of "Howl" in shaping our contemporary sense of human experience. "Howl" speaks to a collective experience of both American dreams of "supernatural ecstasy" and capitalist nightmares of "sexless hydrogen" "Moloch." But, "Howl" testifies to a collective experience that is on the fringe, the edges and extremes in the barely understood realms of human experience, of "Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies!" "dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!" "Howl" validates that "sensitive bullshit" of our bodily, affective experience, resanctifying it as "Holy! Holy! Holy!" "Howl" speaks to those "who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity." Yet, while Ginsberg speaks to those dwelling on the misunderstood edges of 'polite' and 'normal' middle-of-the-road American society, "Howl" also assembles a new community that understands humanity via its connectivity, one bridged in the recognition of experiences and ways of being that are conventionally partitioned off in those "buildings" of "judgment,"the "invincible madhouses" and "incomprehensible prison!"
This weekend I read The Poem that Changed America: "Howl" Fifty Years Later, a collection of essays from poets, academics, and friends of Ginsberg's who recount their initial encouter with Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl." A common thread throughout these accounts is the immense disruption that the poem caused to readers' understanding of themselves, of America, and of poetry. Edited by Jason Shinder, the volume includes essays from Frank Bidart, Sven Birkerts, Amiri Baraka, among others, which testify to the influence of "Howl" in shaping our contemporary sense of human experience. "Howl" speaks to a collective experience of both American dreams of "supernatural ecstasy" and capitalist nightmares of "sexless hydrogen" "Moloch." But, "Howl" testifies to a collective experience that is on the fringe, the edges and extremes in the barely understood realms of human experience, of "Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies!" "dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!" "Howl" validates that "sensitive bullshit" of our bodily, affective experience, resanctifying it as "Holy! Holy! Holy!" "Howl" speaks to those "who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity." Yet, while Ginsberg speaks to those dwelling on the misunderstood edges of 'polite' and 'normal' middle-of-the-road American society, "Howl" also assembles a new community that understands humanity via its connectivity, one bridged in the recognition of experiences and ways of being that are conventionally partitioned off in those "buildings" of "judgment,"the "invincible madhouses" and "incomprehensible prison!" 
Monday, February 28, 2011
Modernizing Dreams
I've been reading a literary history of American modernism, weaving my way through the key figures and broad strokes of a past time and the culture those generations amassed in response. A response to the horrors of the First World War, that battleground of 'experience' and romantic adventure. And a nation churning its way into a new age, its vast land opened up and symbolically condensed in its network of urban centers, traveled with mechanical speed. A people wrenching in this turn, resistance in the nostalgia and convention of the past, the known and recognized codes and orders. Jubilation in the treasured fleeting Now, and wistful dreams of a new America. An art that wants to turn with a new lens, to show our dreams and fears to us.
The puzzle is getting harder to master, to piece these glimpses of orders and piles of details together into an understanding of the span. That world constructed and reconstructed in words. Those worlds. These novels seeking to recognize the splinters left after the War. wars. Those conflicts abroad and at home, en masse and individual. Henry Adam's multiverse. Freud's unconscious. Zelda's schizophrenia. They are moments of recognition in art of the variety of human experience, of consciousness, of feeling. They seek in their symbolic form to multiple the possibilities, adding new complexities to humanity's record.
The puzzle is getting harder to master, to piece these glimpses of orders and piles of details together into an understanding of the span. That world constructed and reconstructed in words. Those worlds. These novels seeking to recognize the splinters left after the War. wars. Those conflicts abroad and at home, en masse and individual. Henry Adam's multiverse. Freud's unconscious. Zelda's schizophrenia. They are moments of recognition in art of the variety of human experience, of consciousness, of feeling. They seek in their symbolic form to multiple the possibilities, adding new complexities to humanity's record.
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