The epigraph for Howl is from Walt Whitman: "Unscrew the locks from the doors!/Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!" Announcing his intentions with this ringing motto, Allen Ginsberg published a volume of poetry which broke so many social taboos that copies were impounded as obscene, and the publisher, poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, was arrested. The court case that followed found for Ginsberg and his publisher, and the publicity made both the poet and the book famous. Ginsberg went on from this beginning to become a cultural icon of sixties radicalism. This works seminal place in the culture is indicated in Czeslaw Milosz's poetic tribute to Ginsberg: "Your blasphemous howl still resounds in a neon desert where the human tribe wanders, sentenced to unreality".


From Library Journal
Lately, Ginsberg hasn't always been in top form, but "Howl" remains a masterpiece. White Shroud is the best of his later works.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New Yorker, Helen Vendler
[Ginsberg's political] actions make him a significant cultural figure, but it is the poetry that makes him a significant literary figure.


Midwest Book Review
The reissue of this classic in its small hardcover form assures that new generations will have access to the prophetic words of this 1950s beat poet. This is the poem which reflected and launched a generation of rebels: its new form assures expanded readership.


Book Description
poetry, Pocket Poets classic

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The prophetic poem that launched a generation when it was first published in 1956 is here presented in a commemorative 40th Anniversary Edition. When the book arrived from its British printers, it was seized almost immediately by U.S. Customs, and shortly thereafter the San Francisco police arrested its publisher and editor, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, together with the City Lights Bookstore manager, Shigeyoshi Murao. The two of them were charged with disseminating obscene literature, and the case went to trial in the Municipal Court of Judge Clayton Horn. A parade of distinguished literary and academic witnesses persuaded the judge that the title poem was indeed not obscene and that it had "redeeming social significance." Thus was Howl and Other Poems freed to become the single most influential poetic work of the post World War II era, with over 800,000 copies now in print.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

Lately, Ginsberg hasn't always been in top form, but "Howl" remains a masterpiece. "White Shroud" is the best of his later works.

Library Journal