Howl and Other Poems

Howl and Other Poems is a landmark 1956 collection by Allen Ginsberg, published by City Lights Books, that ignited the Beat Generation with its raw, prophetic energy. The title poem, Howl, delivers a furious lament for the best minds of Ginsberg’s generation destroyed by madness amid postwar America’s materialism, conformity, and militarism, while celebrating the ecstatic freedoms of the body, drugs, jazz, and homosexual love. Accompanied by works like A Supermarket in California, Sunflower Sutra, and America, the book blends visionary rants, surreal imagery, and social critique, sparking an obscenity trial that affirmed free speech in literature.