Ginsberg's Howl Comes to Life
by Caser
"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness..." opens Allen Ginsberg's unbridled 1955 poem, Howl. The story behind the writing, publication, and public response to this poem is as fascinating as the sometimes acerbic, often beautiful, and always fascinating language that Ginsberg uses here to describe the world and the people that surround him. Two years after Howl's publication by City Lights in San Francisco, the poem -- and the publisher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti -- were put on trial for obscenity, thrusting into American consciousness the death of Eisenhower-era values and the birth of a massive youth counter culture.
Earlier this year, directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman released a film, appropriately titled Howl, which chronicles the story surrounding the poem while simultaneously presenting the poem with animated images as startling as the lyric that accompanies it. The film had limited release, though it stars James Franco as Ginsberg, with Mad Men's Jon Hamm and Weeds' Mary-Louise Parker in supporting roles. The AADL has the Graphic Novel version of the film with the movie's animations spread across the fold and the poem's words written in typewriter font.
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