Howl Themes

In Howl, madness is relative. In fact, this poem turns our common notions of sanity on their head. People society typically sees as perfectly normal, the speaker considers insane. People that socie...

No group defied the rules that defined orderly life in 1950s America quite like the Beats. Ginsberg was no anarchist, but he believed that the severity of the justice and health systems stunted the...

Like that other classic of Beat literature, Jack Kerouac's On the Road, Howl celebrates personal freedom and breaking free from social norms. Travel is one means of acquiring freedom, the character...

Is Ginsberg really a religious poet, or is he just "spiritual," which is a word we sometimes use to describe people who seem to believe in "something," only we're not sure what? After all, the spea...

Many writers have explored America from the top down. They have focused on what the most renowned and respectable people do – the crème de la crème – and assume that it repres...