Post on "Howl"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWqHlcAmBeA

Upon my initail exposure to the poetic lament of ginsberg's "howl", i was foremost overwhelmed by both its radical nature and explicit content.Ginsberg's almost tormented delivery serves to exacerbate the surreal and drug drenched world of imagery we are quickly faced with, giving an almost autobiographical sense of poetic direction.
The beat poet uses his ability to conjure shocking images through his uncensored command of evocative yet frank choices of language.This really gives the poem an unnerving tone, in his personal performance you quickly get the sense of a man looking for his own "angry fix" unable to be satisfied with the world around him. This mood seems to reach its climax in part two of the poem, which is drenched in a very bitter and quite surreal depction of a charcter the poet sites as "moloch" - here we are enveloped in ginsbergs melancholy and often grim view of a suggested american society, or perhaps just society in large.Overall the poem is a wonderful example of pure expression, whilst often bordering on the obscene, ginsberg challenges and shocks the listener/reader into a world of fantastic images and poetry. dhannis