Publication
Harper Perennial (2010), Paperback, 224 pages
Physical description
224 p.; 8.98 inches
ISBN
0141195703 / 9780141195704
Language
Collection
Description
The famous poem that began a major censorship trial. Illustrated with stills from the computer animation that was included in the 2010 movie by the same name.
User reviews
LibraryThing member richardderus
Rating: 4.5* of five
The Book Description: First published in 1956, Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" is a prophetic masterpiece--an epic raging against dehumanizing society that overcame censorship trials and obscenity charges to become one of the most widely read poems of the century.
My Review: This comic
Thing is, I meant it. The film of Howl with yummy-looking intellectual James Franco as Allen wasn't all that well received. I liked it. I thought, long as you're making movies out of poems, why not pick the one that's best in show. Howl is exactly that...a howl...and it's the one incisor left in the toothless, rotted, stinking jaw of modern American poetry.
Ahem. Not that I have a prejudice, you understand.
Drooker's artwork might be familiar to the graphically inclined, and it will please or it won't on its own merits. I happen to like it quite a lot. But the crucial point here is whether the art and the poem mesh, combine, in such a way as to create something that's different from either of the parts, whose sum is greater than the parts by virtue of synchrony.
Yes. Indeed yes. The parts are a lovely object, some pretty artwork, and a major poem of the last century. The sum is a wallop between the eyes with a padded, velvet-covered crowbar.
Finally! A graphique nawvell that's better than a comic book!
The Book Description: First published in 1956, Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" is a prophetic masterpiece--an epic raging against dehumanizing society that overcame censorship trials and obscenity charges to become one of the most widely read poems of the century.
My Review: This comic
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book...oh dear do pardon, Graphic Novel...was a Yuletide gift, so I sorta hadda look at it and oooh and aaah.Thing is, I meant it. The film of Howl with yummy-looking intellectual James Franco as Allen wasn't all that well received. I liked it. I thought, long as you're making movies out of poems, why not pick the one that's best in show. Howl is exactly that...a howl...and it's the one incisor left in the toothless, rotted, stinking jaw of modern American poetry.
Ahem. Not that I have a prejudice, you understand.
Drooker's artwork might be familiar to the graphically inclined, and it will please or it won't on its own merits. I happen to like it quite a lot. But the crucial point here is whether the art and the poem mesh, combine, in such a way as to create something that's different from either of the parts, whose sum is greater than the parts by virtue of synchrony.
Yes. Indeed yes. The parts are a lovely object, some pretty artwork, and a major poem of the last century. The sum is a wallop between the eyes with a padded, velvet-covered crowbar.
Finally! A graphique nawvell that's better than a comic book!
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LibraryThing member jnwelch
I'm joining Richard and Mark and others in praising the graphic version of Allen Ginsberg's famous poem, Howl A Graphic Novel, illustrated powerfully by Eric Drooker. The poem begins, "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness", and is inspired by his meeting the mental patient
It's in three parts with a footnote. The first part is, according to Ginsberg, "a lament for the Lamb in America, with instances of remarkable lamb-like youths". Written in the mid-1950s, the poem invokes the Beat Generation, artists, poets, jazz musicians, "negroes", drug addicts, and lots more, with frank homosexuality being most controversially included. (Ferlinghetti's publication of it went to trial and was finally judged non-obscene). Created mainly in Ellie's beloved Berkeley, it chantingly covers the whole country, a road trip sometimes reminiscent of his co-traveller Jack Keroac's book.
The propulsive rhythm of this "Howl" was brand new, and is what captured me as a young guy, along with the unceasing vibrant imagery in it. What is great about this book is that Drooker brings his own images to it, which often riff on the poem, rather than literally depict what is said. One of my favorites is a Harlem apartment "crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology", depicted by Drooker in an orange, red and yellow tinted illustration as a Harlem apartment building on a tiny tropical island with palm trees and a man fishing on a dock extended from it. Great! In another, a madman "rocking and rolling in the midnight bench-dolmen realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon," is depicted as a man standing on top of an El train, riding its roof through the shadowy night city skyscrapers.
The poem needs to be read as one fervid howl, and it sings everyone, including those "who were burned alive in their innocent flannel/suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden/verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron/regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine/ shrieks of the fairies of advertising . . ." Part II addresses who slaughtered the Lambs, beginning, "What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?" Part three is addressed to Carl Solomon, and famously recites "I'm with you in Rockland" (the mental institution). It is loving toward the beauty of the mad and downtrodden, and Drooker illustrates Solomon's journey in the mental institution and through his dreams, "across America in tears/to the door of my cottage in the Western night." In the footnote, all is Holy, all of it, from soup to nuts (of more than one kind), e.g. "Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocks/ of the grandfathers of Kansas!"
Immersion in this poem is like no other experience, and, as you can tell, I'm another one who found this illustrated version brought something new and wonderful to it.
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Carl Solomon, and by his own schizophrenic mother who reportedly was lobotomized. It's in three parts with a footnote. The first part is, according to Ginsberg, "a lament for the Lamb in America, with instances of remarkable lamb-like youths". Written in the mid-1950s, the poem invokes the Beat Generation, artists, poets, jazz musicians, "negroes", drug addicts, and lots more, with frank homosexuality being most controversially included. (Ferlinghetti's publication of it went to trial and was finally judged non-obscene). Created mainly in Ellie's beloved Berkeley, it chantingly covers the whole country, a road trip sometimes reminiscent of his co-traveller Jack Keroac's book.
The propulsive rhythm of this "Howl" was brand new, and is what captured me as a young guy, along with the unceasing vibrant imagery in it. What is great about this book is that Drooker brings his own images to it, which often riff on the poem, rather than literally depict what is said. One of my favorites is a Harlem apartment "crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology", depicted by Drooker in an orange, red and yellow tinted illustration as a Harlem apartment building on a tiny tropical island with palm trees and a man fishing on a dock extended from it. Great! In another, a madman "rocking and rolling in the midnight bench-dolmen realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon," is depicted as a man standing on top of an El train, riding its roof through the shadowy night city skyscrapers.
The poem needs to be read as one fervid howl, and it sings everyone, including those "who were burned alive in their innocent flannel/suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden/verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron/regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine/ shrieks of the fairies of advertising . . ." Part II addresses who slaughtered the Lambs, beginning, "What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?" Part three is addressed to Carl Solomon, and famously recites "I'm with you in Rockland" (the mental institution). It is loving toward the beauty of the mad and downtrodden, and Drooker illustrates Solomon's journey in the mental institution and through his dreams, "across America in tears/to the door of my cottage in the Western night." In the footnote, all is Holy, all of it, from soup to nuts (of more than one kind), e.g. "Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocks/ of the grandfathers of Kansas!"
Immersion in this poem is like no other experience, and, as you can tell, I'm another one who found this illustrated version brought something new and wonderful to it.
Show Less
LibraryThing member ironicqueery
Erik Drooker does an excellent job illustrating Allen Ginsberg's Howl. Reproducing the poem in lush, full color illustrations over 217 pages takes the poem to a new level. I was able to slow down and read small sections, as designed, and digest each verse. The illustrations add to the context of
The blending of great art and poetry makes for a new level of understanding of Howl and its important impact on society, and as Ginsberg hoped, makes the accessible and relevant to a whole new generation of readers.
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the poem and help set the mood with the art. The blending of great art and poetry makes for a new level of understanding of Howl and its important impact on society, and as Ginsberg hoped, makes the accessible and relevant to a whole new generation of readers.
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LibraryThing member questbird
I've seen Howl adapted a couple of times now. I have read the original poem, listened to the Hydrogen Jukebox audio version (composed by Phillip Glass, and now read this graphic novel (apparently there is a movie with James Franco too). It is more like an illuminated manuscript; the text is
* It appears that other LibraryThing reviewers have ended on this note too (I always write my review before reading others'). I'm happy to be in agreement with them. Howl does begin with, "I have seen the best minds of my generation..."
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preserved and illustrations have been added. I enjoyed Drooker's urban nightmare illustrations; they fit the text well in a kind of hallucinogenic computer animation way, and provide signposts in a text which is sometimes hard to follow. This effect is also achieved by breaking up the text into manageable (and illuminable) chunks. I like it that Ginsberg has collaborated with other artists to re-imagine his work, and that he found Drooker's work fascinating before their collaboration; Ginsberg used to tear down and collect Drooker's street posters. Howl is a powerful and angry poem and I found it more approachable thanks to the illustrations. I'm sure this graphic novel will help to introduce the work to a new generation.** It appears that other LibraryThing reviewers have ended on this note too (I always write my review before reading others'). I'm happy to be in agreement with them. Howl does begin with, "I have seen the best minds of my generation..."
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LibraryThing member JWarren42
Brilliance. The only thing that I would have liked more would have been 100% hand-drawn art rather than computer assisted work. Still breathtaking, though. HIGHLY recommended.
LibraryThing member mamzel
This is the first time I actually read this poem, representative of the beat poets. I can't boast that I understand all of it but I certainly can see the brilliance of the author. The art of this book is fabulous but is less dark and jagged than the words.
LibraryThing member Robert.Zimmermann
The text itself, well, many of us know the poem already...even if we can't fully decipher it. This is maybe my third or fourth reading of Howl. This time, though, it was even more different of a reading. I picked up this graphic novel version to see what an illustrated reading would bring to the
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poem. I was a little disappointed. While a direct word-to-picture adaptation would be nearly impossible (and possibly ruin the integrity of the poem for some readers), I felt the illustrations didn't do much to enhance the experience. Part of it may have been the style. But another part was simply that it didn't seem to bring out any of what I got out of the poem. Again, this will vary from reader to reader, so I can't hold it against the book too completely. I was just expecting something different and more fulfilling. A positive thing that came out of this reading, though, is since the text was displayed on the page differently than a text-only version of the poem, I was able to focus more on each line and image (from the text, not the physical image) in a way that I hadn't before when it was just line-after-line and stanza-after-stanza in a book. Show Less
LibraryThing member BirdBrian
This is a beautiful and strange book, in which Alan Ginsberg’s 1955 poem Howl is complemented by the otherworldly art of Eric Drooker. Ginsberg was one of the original “Beatniks” and hung with such likeminded buddies as Jack Kerouac, Mort Sahl, and William Burroughs. It’s difficult to pin
The poem is divided into three parts, although they are so different, I’m not sure why they aren’t just three different poems. The first part has a ton of esoteric references to various of Ginsberg’s friends, artists he admired, and other figures in the Beat movement. It’s mostly a disillusioned and in-your-face rejection of the sanitized and wholesome images of post-war America that predominated at the time. Not having lived through the 1950’s, my impressions of that era were formed by Leave It to Beaver… an innocent and pure existence in a pristine suburbia, where young rascals like the Beav might get into the occasional scrape- say by accidentally hitting a baseball through Old Man Baker’s kitchen window- but nothing was ever so bad it couldn’t be set right with slice of Mom’s old fashioned homemade apple pie; Scout’s Honor! Allen Ginsburg writes from the underside of the 50’s, and describes realities of America that June Cleaver would never repeat in polite company. Drugs, poverty and violence, for starters: “…starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.”
Ward, we really shouldn’t have this book in the house! If Wally found it, maybe we could explain, but the Beav? I just don’t know what I would do if he ever got his hands on this!
The obscenity charges filed against publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti in 1957 were most likely due to the references of homosexuality:“…who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts, who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy, who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caressers of Atlantic and Caribbean love, who balled in the morning, in the evenings in rose gardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may…”
This is also why custom officials refused to admit publications from abroad which contained the (American) poem. Go figure.
There are some heterosexual passages as well, which got the Archdiocese and the PTA up in arms:
“…who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake, who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver-- joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards…”
Gosh Wally, even a creep like Eddie Haskell knew where the line was.
Part II is more about the military-industrial complex. I wonder whether Ike got any ideas for his farewell address from Howl. Ginsberg personifies the excesses of capitalism in the pagan god Moloch. I think part II is my favorite.“…Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen!…”
Part III is the most personal, and relates to the period in 1949 when Ginsberg was a patient at Columbia Presbyterian Psychological Institute (I’m not sure why). It is addressed to another patient Ginsberg knew there, Carl Solomon. I’d like to know more about this part- who Solomon was, and what his significance was to Ginsberg.
Overall, this is a captivating and provocative poem, and the accompanying artwork is perfect. It may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but for its cultural and historic importance alone, I think it is worth everybody taking the time to read it once. I’m fascinated by the Beat movement. Their influence can be seen all over the counterculture of the 60’s, and in such diverse works as Bob Dylan‘s songs, Woody Allen‘s movies, and Philip K Dick‘s novels. It’s weird how the culture changed after World War II. The 1950’s have such a conservative image, but they were really awash in cultural reinvention. Hugh Heffner launched Playboy in the 1950’s. Dave Brubeck brought jazz into the mainstream in the 1950’s. Nabokov mortified readers with Lolita in the 1950’s. Lenny Bruce shocked audiences by talking about abortion, drugs and the Ku Klux Klan in the 1950’s. And Allen Ginsberg wrote this primal, maniacal, but also complex and thoughtful poem in the 1950’s. Read it.
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down an exact “Beat” philosophy, but it was more or less nonconformist, disdainful of the materialism of the prosperous 50’s, experimental with recreational drugs, and generally open-minded towards homosexuality, sex outside of marriage, jazz music, miscegenation, and all the other social forces which terrorized the conservative older generation. The poem is divided into three parts, although they are so different, I’m not sure why they aren’t just three different poems. The first part has a ton of esoteric references to various of Ginsberg’s friends, artists he admired, and other figures in the Beat movement. It’s mostly a disillusioned and in-your-face rejection of the sanitized and wholesome images of post-war America that predominated at the time. Not having lived through the 1950’s, my impressions of that era were formed by Leave It to Beaver… an innocent and pure existence in a pristine suburbia, where young rascals like the Beav might get into the occasional scrape- say by accidentally hitting a baseball through Old Man Baker’s kitchen window- but nothing was ever so bad it couldn’t be set right with slice of Mom’s old fashioned homemade apple pie; Scout’s Honor! Allen Ginsburg writes from the underside of the 50’s, and describes realities of America that June Cleaver would never repeat in polite company. Drugs, poverty and violence, for starters: “…starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.”
Ward, we really shouldn’t have this book in the house! If Wally found it, maybe we could explain, but the Beav? I just don’t know what I would do if he ever got his hands on this!
The obscenity charges filed against publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti in 1957 were most likely due to the references of homosexuality:“…who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts, who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy, who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caressers of Atlantic and Caribbean love, who balled in the morning, in the evenings in rose gardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may…”
This is also why custom officials refused to admit publications from abroad which contained the (American) poem. Go figure.
There are some heterosexual passages as well, which got the Archdiocese and the PTA up in arms:
“…who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake, who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver-- joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards…”
Gosh Wally, even a creep like Eddie Haskell knew where the line was.
Part II is more about the military-industrial complex. I wonder whether Ike got any ideas for his farewell address from Howl. Ginsberg personifies the excesses of capitalism in the pagan god Moloch. I think part II is my favorite.“…Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen!…”
Part III is the most personal, and relates to the period in 1949 when Ginsberg was a patient at Columbia Presbyterian Psychological Institute (I’m not sure why). It is addressed to another patient Ginsberg knew there, Carl Solomon. I’d like to know more about this part- who Solomon was, and what his significance was to Ginsberg.
Overall, this is a captivating and provocative poem, and the accompanying artwork is perfect. It may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but for its cultural and historic importance alone, I think it is worth everybody taking the time to read it once. I’m fascinated by the Beat movement. Their influence can be seen all over the counterculture of the 60’s, and in such diverse works as Bob Dylan‘s songs, Woody Allen‘s movies, and Philip K Dick‘s novels. It’s weird how the culture changed after World War II. The 1950’s have such a conservative image, but they were really awash in cultural reinvention. Hugh Heffner launched Playboy in the 1950’s. Dave Brubeck brought jazz into the mainstream in the 1950’s. Nabokov mortified readers with Lolita in the 1950’s. Lenny Bruce shocked audiences by talking about abortion, drugs and the Ku Klux Klan in the 1950’s. And Allen Ginsberg wrote this primal, maniacal, but also complex and thoughtful poem in the 1950’s. Read it.
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LibraryThing member eldang
I read the poem as a teenager, and I've gradually been getting more interested in graphic novels, so when I saw a graphic novel version--with Ginsberg's involvement, so I knew it wouldn't be a horrible hack job--in Powell's recently I couldn't resist.
The poem is just as viciously powerful as when I
For me, apparently unlike for most of the reviewers on Goodreads, the illustrations added quite a lot. They're beautiful in themselves, the style feels very appropriate, and they fit both the individual images and the cacophonic succession of images very well. They also add something else unexpected: by letting the book put each breath of the text on a new page, they make the poem fit the print format much better than in the text-only edition I had read before, letting it flow more naturally than it can all squashed onto one page.
The poem is just as viciously powerful as when I
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first read it; though I can only imagine it would have had more impact when it was published, in 1956. The only detail that marks it as in any way dated is the repeated references to typewriters. The significance of the age is more that it shows the disaffection and societal failure it recounts as not only not being novel--I knew that, though it's good to be reminded--but even older than I had realised. The boomer generation has somehow managed to spin this fable of rebellion having been invented in the mid-late 60s, whereas here is a long poem from 10 years earlier that oozes vitriol at the establishment and recounts insistently all the "collateral damage" of an epoch that these days seems to get romanticised as being before everything got so damn complicated.For me, apparently unlike for most of the reviewers on Goodreads, the illustrations added quite a lot. They're beautiful in themselves, the style feels very appropriate, and they fit both the individual images and the cacophonic succession of images very well. They also add something else unexpected: by letting the book put each breath of the text on a new page, they make the poem fit the print format much better than in the text-only edition I had read before, letting it flow more naturally than it can all squashed onto one page.
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LibraryThing member Amellia_Fiske
When I first encountered "Howl" in high school, I couldn't appreciate all of the poem's references and meanings. I'm glad I revisited it because now I feel it more deeply, through life experience. However, I was not terribly impressed by the artwork that represented the poem in this graphic
That said, I read the introduction and the artist worked with Ginsberg...so perhaps I wasn't in the right headspace. It definitely put me in the mood to read more Ginsberg, though.
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adaptation. The 3D renderings lacked feeling and emotion; the creature representing Moloch felt more like a video game antagonist; it just didn't capture it for me. I think some of the images were stills from the film and that could explain why it was lacking for me.That said, I read the introduction and the artist worked with Ginsberg...so perhaps I wasn't in the right headspace. It definitely put me in the mood to read more Ginsberg, though.
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