The Poem That Changed America

"In America 2006 the idea that someone could thump the world on the skull with a poem and the world would care—that poetry and the world would both be turned upside down—is somewhere between romantic and ridiculous. But here we are, 50 years after Allen Ginsberg dropped his landmark work, 'Howl,' and it continues to resonate with readers on multiple levels. For this appreciation Shinder, Ginsberg's longtime assistant, has pulled together a glowing, thorough, invigorating collection of essays on the poem that became the manifesto for a generation. Contributors range from academics experts (Marjorie Perloff and Eileen Myles) whose love bleeds all over their analysis to Amiri Baraka, who delivers an I-was-there account of the scene, to Rick Moody, Andrei Codrescu, and Luc Sante, all talking about how the poem exploded within them. It's a revivifying, hungry book that isn't just about Ginsberg, his angelheaded hipsters, and Moloch, but about art and big dreams and the revolutionary possibilities they contain."—Jessica Hopper, Chicago Reader


"'Howl,'" the infamous Beat-era poem by Allen Ginsberg, turns 50 this year. The anniversary has already led to the inevitable tribute readings and gassy lionizations. Happily, it has also flushed out a terrific anthology of essays on the poem's legacy edited by Jason Shinder, The Poem That Changed America: 'Howl' Fifty Years Later."—John Freeman, Orlando Weekly

"Revisiting 'Howl' reminds you that it's first and foremost a great poem . . . It's great writing, which is why it can still be read today and still go on changing America."—Geoffrey Himes, Baltimore City Paper

"This is a splendid tribute collecting . . . reflections on Ginsberg."—Jeff Simon, The Buffalo News


"An absolutely indispensable revelation of how the best minds of succeeding generations considered 'Howl.' Let's hope that this book, too, might change America."—Lawrence Ferlinghetti

"The Poem That Changed America is alive on every page. Ginsberg's 'Howl' calls out to who we are at any given moment: bold, driven, tormented; ecstatic, solitary, or joined in ecstasy. Ginsberg wanted us to respond in our own voices, and because each writer here does, this wonderful book is more than a tribute—it's a collaboration with the poet himself."—Margo Jefferson

"Recommended for all literature collections . . . The most influential poem since T.S. Eliot's ‘The Waste Land,' Allen Ginsberg's ‘Howl' is about to celebrate its 50th anniversary. Shinder has collected 26 essays that document the poem's reception, from its stormy City Lights publication in November 1956 to the canonical status it enjoys today. Contributors include fellow poets Amiri Baraka, Andrei Codrescu, Alicia Ostriker, and Robert Pinsky as well as disciples like Anne Waldman and Eliot Katz. There are also appreciations by scholars and journalists like Marjorie Perloff, Gordon Ball, David Gates, Vivian Gornick, and Ginsberg's early biographer, Jane Kramer. The hardcover edition includes a CD of Ginsberg reading ‘Howl.'"—William Gargan, Brooklyn College Library, CUNY, Library Journal

"Poet and anthologist Shinder rounds up two dozen literati to reflect on the revolutionary impact of Allen Ginsberg's most famous work. ‘Howl' has been outraging the squares and enrapturing the alienated ever since Ginsberg first read portions of it at a San Francisco gallery in 1955. Published in the famous City Lights paperback edition in 1956, it overcame obscenity prosecutions to spread its subversive message overseas (Andrei Codrescu recalls reading it in Romania as a teenager) and across the generations (Alicia Ostriker, Marge Piercy and Eileen Myles are among the younger poets who write here of being inspired by it to break free from literary constraints). ‘Allen Ginsberg is responsible for loosening the breath of American poetry,' Helen Vendler once wrote; Shinder's introduction points out that it loosened up a whole lot more. Amiri Baraka captures-in jazzy Beat prose-the poem's status as a quintessential Beat document; Mark Doty investigates it as an expression of queer sexuality (but not an icon of the gay movement); Rick Moody proclaims its relevance to the punk-rock crowd; and Eliot Katz rather drably explains its political relevance, then and now. Thank goodness for Marjorie Perloff's excellent explication of its formal qualities, or we might forget that ‘Howl' is, first and foremost, a truly great poem. (Doty also does a nice job of reminding us how funny it is.) But Ginsberg's cry of revolt and embrace of excess has always burst the bounds of literature, promising ecstasy and liberation to all kinds of people, from Robert Lowell to Bob Dylan, 1960s radicals to New Age spiritual seekers. It was, perhaps, ‘the last poem to hit the world with the impact of news and grip it with the tenacity of a pop song,' as Luc Sante notes with characteristic acuity. Variable in quality though they are, taken as a whole the essays here offer a plethora of reasons why. A moving tribute to Walt Whitman's truest heir."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"If the opening lines of Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl' aren't seared into your brain, they will be by the end of this collection of 26 essays compiled by Shinder, a poet who learned much of his craft as Ginsberg's pupil . . . This collection juxtaposes reflections by writers such as Rick Moody and Andrei Codrescu about the impact of "Howl' on their lives; Billy Collins writes, "it wasn't a waste of time for a Catholic high school boy from the suburbs to try to sound in his poems like a downtown homosexual Jewish beatnik." Robert Pinsky writes that he was initially elated by the poem's linguistic freedom even more than by its raw emotion . . . Everybody gives the poem its due as an American classic . . . and nearly everyone has a Ginsberg story to tell, even if it's just about being blown away by hearing him read. For those who have been moved by Ginsberg's words, this collection serves as a stirring confirmation."—Publishers Weekly