# data[].attributes.body
"While "Howl" (1956) does not report on mystical vision directly, its account of those who do experience it employs this tone, when the speaker gains sudden insight into the mechanics of all Creation. For Ginsberg, this prophetic mode was the only proper mode for poetry and he scorned the mainstream poetry of the 1950s "

# data[].attributes.body
"Howl knowingly forges itself in the mode of romantic confession, but uses this mode to speak the particular secret of homosexuality"

# data[].attributes.headline
Differences Between Dante and Ginsberg- Source 2

# data[].attributes.subject
Differences Between Dante and Ginsberg- Source 2

# data[].attributes.body
"But what is licrcely condemned by Dante is celebrated by Ginsberg--always seminal and semenal--whose friends are the victims of repressive sexual laws. He subtly echoes Dante's punishment by having his fast-paced sodomites--"f***ed in the a** by saintly motorcyclists"--furiously and obsessively moving back and forth across the country."

# data[].attributes.body
"...and many wounded, fallen souls striving for illumination and redemption. He mentions purgatory and paradise, and his thematic last line--"Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul!"---echoes the sacred sense of the last line of Paradiso: "l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle" (the love that moves the sun and the other stars)."

# data[].attributes.body
"...whose worshippers had to sacrifice their own children, are Ginsberg's Inferno. Moloch is his equivalent of Lucifer, whom Dante sees with Judas in the lowest circle of Hell. Section III, Ginsberg's homage to catatonia, portrays his sympathetic identification with Carl Solomon, the dedicatee of the poem.""

# data[].attributes.body
"The degree to which Howl is a poem about "opening secrecy" becomes evident in the poet's use of ellipses; in earlier poems, ellipses are used to stand-in for same-sex desire, but in Howl they represent his mother's insanity rather than sex between men, which is no longer censored."

# data[].attributes.body
"what Ginsberg chose to tell his friends shocked many people, but his frankness succeeded in unsettling social norms. "

# data[].attributes.body
""Howl" is more concerned to represent immediate feeling and thought, it must be noted that the poem was painstakingly revised."

# data[].attributes.body
"Although Allen Ginsberg's Howl is one of the most remarkable "confessional" poems to address the perceived social crises of the 1950s, it is not usually discussed under the rubric of confession since it does not adhere to the confessional aesthetic advocated by Rosenthal and Lowell. "

# data[].attributes.body
"It is clear that here and also throughout all his works, Allen Ginsberg considers Poe as a source of inspiration for "the best minds of my generation," worthy of mention next to the conveniently alliterative Plotinus, two geniuses, past and present"

# data[].attributes.body
"He didn't just write poetry, he performed it, with a dramatic presence and sheer vocal power and exuberance audiences hadn't seen or heard since Dylan Thomas. It is no exaggeration to say that the dynamic rhythmic momentum of "Howl" led to rap and hip-hop."

# data[].attributes.body
"In "Howl" and other works, he wrote about then-taboo subjects, like sex, drugs, and insanity."

# data[].attributes.body
"presenting the many dehumanizing forces of today's world, which "destroyed ... the best minds of my generation ... who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah ..."--a significant combination, "

# data[].attributes.body
""Howl" defies all conventional, political, social, moral and especially sexual beliefs. Dante's dear friend Brunetto Latini is forced to run incessantly as punishment for unnatural lust: his (unnamed) sodomy.

# data[].attributes.body
"Both The Divine Comedy and "Howl" combine descriptions of harsh Old Testament punishment and pain with the promise of New Testament salvation, and Ginsberg even quotes Christ's last words on the Cross. He not only portrays dim "burning fire" and "supernatural darkness," but also invokes angels and archangels, seraphim and saints...

# data[].attributes.body
"The structure of "Howl" roughly corresponds to that of The Divine Comedy. Section I, a long series of laments, beginning with the pronoun "who," about chastisements and tortures, and section II, a condemnation of the materialistic and repressive society symbolized by the Canaanite fire god Moloch...

# data[].attributes.body
"In "Howl" Ginsberg places his own revolutionary poetry of suffering--his portrayal of outcast homosexuals and drug addicts, the insane and suicidal--in opposition to the traditional values of society."

# data[].attributes.body
"On another level, in Ginsberg's tireless promotion of the writings of his friends such as Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso and Peter Orlovsky, one sees the importance of the idea of the coterie. He did not promote their work because they were his friends, rather they became his friends because of the belonged to a community, as Ginsberg saw it at the time, that had had the same vision."

# data[].attributes.body
"In the second line there is solidarity between the mother and son: each is as mad as the other, and the madness, at this point, is still radical political critique, since "sanity [is] a trick of agreement."

# data[].attributes.body
"There is a putative solidarity between all the people described in the first section of "Howl": they react against what they see as a pernicious status quo, and this is embodied in the figure of Moloch in Section II. The last section of the poem, in the anaphoric phrase "I'm with you in Rockland," makes the solidarity of the Beat visionaries much more than putative"

# data[].attributes.body
"For one of the first things that should be remarked about "Howl" is that talk of the sublime is displaced in favor descriptions of people who have experienced it."

# data[].attributes.body
Part 3 continues Ginsberg's long battle against the United State's mental institutions. Not just for the terrible conditions experienced by patients, but also Ginsberh's belief that madness is actually just genius that isn't accepted by mainstream society. This makes Solomon an idol in Ginsberg's eyes when he says that Solomon is "madder tham he is".

# data[].attributes.body
Ginsberg directly links Solomon's own struggle with psycological disorders with Ginsberg's mother's own trials. Ginsberg says he can see "shades of [his] mother" in Solomon's struggles.

# data[].attributes.body
Part 3 of "Howl" is the most direct reference to Carl Solomon, Ginsberg muse for this poem. Every other line referencing "Rockland", the mental institution which the two men stayed at together and describing many of the things Ginsberg saw Solomon go through at this institution.

# data[].attributes.body
While hating the values represented by the Moloch pf the United States, capitalism, blind patriotism, militaristic values, Ginsberg makes it clear that this Moloch cannot be beaten or broken away from. We are taught from a young age to sacrifice our free will and our whole lives to the perpetuation of the Moloch, making it impossible to beat.

# data[].attributes.body
Moloch in this poem is meant to represe to Capitalism, consumerism and all the other values hated by Ginsberg and his contemporaries. The great sacrifice given by the Beats is their sanity and being excluded from society as outcasts in order to feed and maintain the Moloch of mainstream society.

# data[].attributes.body
"Moloch" the being referenced to in Part 2 of "Howl" is in reference to a Middle Eastern and Mediterranean religious force hat demands a great sacrifice.

# data[].attributes.body
The majority of the punctuation in Part 2 is made up of exclamation points. This shows yhe increasing frustration of the speaker and shows true to the title, making the voice of the poem loud and extremely agitated.

# data[].attributes.body
The majority of "Howl" is mainly set in decayed urban environments, like "negro streets" and "painted hotels", in reference to the Beat hubs at the time like San Fransisco and NYC. Also showing how trapped the Beats are by these urban centers, being kept away from the magic of the fully expansive sky.

# data[].attributes.body
This also shows the taboo mixing of the Abrahamoc religions with the mention of Angels from both the bible and tge Koran and Bible, and taking the true name of God from the Torah. Showing the Beat type of irreverence for any established universal truths such as religion.

# data[].attributes.body
Angels and other spiritual beings are referenced to multiple times in the poem. Referring to "the best minds" as "angelheaded hipsters" and mentioning that they witnessed "Mohammedan angels". It is also saod that the bedt minds opened themselves up to "El", which is the true name of God in the Torah.

# data[].attributes.body
Ginsberg believes that the madness experienced by many of his friends is due to the oppressive ociety of the time not allowing them to truly express themselves and keeping them in poverty due to their unpopular beliefs

# data[].attributes.body
Ginsberg considered the people he associated with to be the "best minds" of his generation because, even if they were not as famous as Jack Kerouac, at least they wrre not a part of the mainstream, assembly line society of the time. This is, of course, a personal opinion on Ginsberg's part.

# data[].attributes.body
The beginnig line of the poem, "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked" shows us that not only is Solomon going to be the subject of this poem, but also Ginsberg's fellow Beat associates and friends. Meaning that the descriptions of the "best minds" is most likely biographical to many of people Ginsberg was associated with at the time

# data[].attributes.body
Like many of the other Beat poets, Ginsberg does not respect women as much more than objects for sex eho don't require much personality. However, this poem is distinctly more homosexual in nature, with multiple references to male genitalia. Ginsberg even refers to his subject at one point as a "c***sucker".

# data[].attributes.body
These longer lines also fit the idea of the poem being one long, loud rant from Ginsberg, with the lines fitting into the long winded rambling befitting an impasdioned poet.

# data[].attributes.body
"Howl" epitomizes the Beat style of poetry known as freeverse, in whixh there is no set rhyme scheme or meter. "Howl" also reads a bit more like prose than poetry, with long lines, proper punctuation and sectioned into different parts.

# data[].attributes.body
One of the major themes of the poem is that of madness, especially in Part 1. Talking about "dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix" and "who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts".

# data[].attributes.body
The title "Howl" is meant to foreshadow the feeling of the poem. A long and emotional scream to let out pent yp agression at the cruelty perpetuated by the world onto people.

# data[].attributes.body
The subtitle "for Carl Solomon" is in reference to a man Ginsberg meet in a mental institution. Many of the parts of the poem, including the majority of Part 2, directly reference some of the madness Solomon suffered through his life

# data[].attributes.body
Ginsberg seems to shedding a more realistic light on the desparity caused by living like a "Beat". Including the abuse of drugs, never staying in one place for too long, and living in seemingly consyant poverty.