Piece Audio (Timing and Cues: ?An Angel-headed Hipster?s Howl? Fifty year?s after the publication of Allen Ginsberg?s poem ?Howl? and its subsequent obscenity trial, poets and friends look back at its origins, impact and relevance today. Interviews: Bob Rosenthal, poet and Ginsberg?s secretary Eliot Katz, poet and student of Ginsberg Kurt Brown, poet and teacher Recordings of Ginsberg and others reading Howl SCRIPT DAVID: Radio Netherlands Worldwide presents Vox Humana. I?m David Swatling. SOUND: Rosenthal & wolf howls from Thompson Square Park event MUSIC: Howl saxophone DAVID - Allen in Amsterdam, trial in San Fransisco (Oct 3-4, 1957) ?Dumps, nothing to do / I want to be home in bed / with a fiery Book-? the angel-headed hipster jots in journal. ?I got no money / ain't even got the blues / all I got is Amsterdam / and a red lite on the table.? Hmm? not one of his best. Time to blow this Old World charm. He?d rambled Rembrandts at the Rijks, jived to jazz in Bohemian haze. October 4, 1957 - The Russians launch their Sputnik into space. Allen Ginsberg and his lover, an old friend and two new Dutch ones turn history into poetry amid the posh pack of Caf? Americain. Their party gets rowdy. Someone asks them to leave. But celebration is in order. The day before, a San Francisco judge deemed the angel-headed hipster?s poem Howl ?not obscene.? The black-robed voice decreed. ?In considering material claimed to be obscene, it is well to remember the motto: Evil to him who thinks evil.? Not exactly poetry, but it did the trick. Two years after the famous first reading. Unveiling the emotional time bomb, set to explode the Beat Generation, then Marco-Polo ?round the globe for generations to come? RECORDING: Allen Ginsberg reading Howl ? March 18, 1956 (1st read Oct 7, 1955) BOB ROSENTHAL: Allen wasn?t trying to be a revolutionary. He wasn?t really an avant-gardist at all. He actually was compassionate. I see Howl as a call to compassion in a very non-compassionate world? READING My name is Bob Rosenthal. I?m a poet and I was blessed to have the opportunity to work with the poet Allen Ginsberg as his personal secretary for twenty years of his life and almost ten years of his afterlife... In the early 50?s he was angry that his friends couldn?t be published and that nobody seemed to take them seriously and didn?t seem to understand how good a writer Jack Kerouac was, or how good a writer William Burroughs was. Not even for himself so much, he really was trying to get his friends published? And Allen liked to say that Jack Kerouac named the poem Howl ? ?I enjoyed your howl.? But Allen called the poem Howl in his journals prior to that. So interesting, it was Allen?s Howl but he once again wanted to bring his friends in and share that with them? READING I think it was very cautiously structured to emulate great poetry & to succeed where Allen really hadn?t been able to succeed before. It sound?s corny ? too find his voice. And it?s a loud voice and he is outraged in Howl. It?s sort of the anger of youth but the poem is so well crafted and so intrinsically deep that it transcends anger and it becomes great poetry. So it changes with his voice and the poem keeps up with him through his whole lifetime. READING: cross-fade from 1956 to 1995 ELIOT KATZ: In 1976 it was. I was an undergraduate student at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ and my roommate Danny Shot and I were taking a class at Rutgers on the Beat tradition in American literature. We actually started with Walt Whitman?s Song of Myself, and went through Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, and we got to Allen Ginsberg?s Howl and reading Whitman?s Song of Myself and Allen?s Howl changed the entire way I thought of poetry. I was not somebody who was interested in poetry in high school. But reading Song of Myself and Howl, I suddenly realized poetry could be electric, relevant and something one could use to explore and express ones thoughts about the world and ones feelings and that it could actually lead to some fun nights on top of it? My name is Eliot Katz. I?m a poet and activist from NYC. I was a student and long-time friend of Allen?s? So I?d read Howl and decided this looks like something I?d like to try doing. And soon thereafter there was a reading scheduled for one night at the Rutgers?s student center that Allen was going to read at and my roommate Danny and I were on the front porch of our apartment drinking ? I don?t remember if it was coffee or beer, probably beer ? and suddenly a taxicab pulled across the street and Allen gets out of the taxicab and starts quickly unloading boxes from the cabs trunk? So Danny and I went across the street and helped Allen carry the boxes out of the cab?s trunk and into Kevin?s apartment for the evening and afterwards Kevin asked if I would drive Allen back to the city after his reading. READING ELIOT KATZ: And so after the reading we picked up the boxes and drove him back to New York. One of the things that happened on that trip was Allen told us he answered all his correspondence at that time which I thought was quite amazing for someone as well-known as Allen Ginsberg. So soon thereafter Danny and I each sent Allen some early poems for his comments. And he wrote back not to long thereafter. He had taken about 10 lines of my poem and crossed out a few words, made a few suggestions, put a few exclamation points by phrases he liked and wrote a little note including a suggested reading list and really in that way gave me my first poetry lesson. It was something I never forgot ? his generosity with young poets he had barely met, just to take the time and answer their poetry questions. READING: the sexy bits? KURT BROWN: Well, its interesting that I was a 13 year old cadet at a military school in South Carolina and we had heard about Howl because it had been banned? My name?s Kurt Brown and I teach poetry workshops at Sarah Lawrence College and I work a little with the Palm Beach Poetry Festival and other festivals around the country? And of course as young boys we were interested in reading about sex and because this had been banned for an obscenity trial we thought, oh, this was gonna be something really tremendous. So of course one of the boys got his hands on the book and we took a bus to the next town to go to church. And the boys left the bus and left the book there and I read it and of course I was tremendously disappointed because it wasn?t forthrightly sexual. There were some sexual words in it but basically it was poetry. So I was disappointed although I realize now after years that what made an impression upon me subliminally was the language and the subject of the contemporary world. My whole idea about poetry took a tectonic shift at that moment although I wasn?t aware of it until years later so I?m grateful for that kind of experience that I had. READING: KURT BROWN: The artistry of the poem, its rhythms, its sounds, its depth of perceptions carry forward certain specific references and make them almost universal. So in Ginsberg?s poem he mentions Fugazzi?s which was a bar up here on 6th Avenue ? nearby ? which no longer exists. But when it is lifted up into the great orchestration of a poem like Howl, Fugozzi?s just becomes the universal eternal dumpy beer bar where people go in the afternoon to discuss poetry and drink their beer and meet other people. It?s the quintessential caf? or beer garden. READING: ?Fugazzi?s section KURT BROWN: Ginsberg has produced a work that is both rooted in his time and can go beyond its time. Same as Whitman. Song of Myself is both rooted in the 19th century America in Manhattan, and yet, not ? timeless. But one of the things I mentioned that Ginsberg wanted to do because of his study of Whitman ? Whitman said Song of Myself was, finally, a language experiment. So Whitman would say things like, ?I raise my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world.? Well, ?yawp? isn?t a word that would appear in any Victorian poetry, American or English. That?s what Ginsberg wanted to do. He also wanted to put together words that, he said, that would never appear together in any other context. ?Listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox.? Well, probably the words hydrogen and jukebox had never appeared together in conjunction in the English language before. Ginsberg?s experiment worked with me very well. It really went right to my young developing sense of language and stuck there ? and stuck there? INTERNATONAL HOWL BOB ROSENTHAL: And I think what was striking about Howl was its candor more than anything else because the post WWII days were not full of candor. Everything was hushed up. Atomic energy was hushed up, Holocaust was hushed up, the realities of war were hushed up, racism was invisible, poverty was invisible. And Allen kept peeling back that onion and came to the inner core and for no more motive than revealing his own inner self. And I think because he showed compassion in the poem, for it starts with the compassion for his friends ? I saw, I saw, who did this, who did that, who did this ? and then the problem is identified ? Moloch, the consumer of people, the industrial military complex eating our children. READING: Moloch section read by Anne Waldman ELIOT KATZ: Moloch was the Canaanite god of fire that people sacrificed children to. The way Moloch functions in part 2 of Howl is it provides a symbol in which Allen could show that the problem in America as being an interconnected range of repressive institutions around military structures, economic structures, sexual structures, cultural structures, spiritual structures, literary institutions. So one of the things you find as Moloch - this symbol that forces conformity on Americans. So Howl is seen as a protest against that expectation of conformity? READING: Moloch ELIOT KATZ: Now in our post-9/11 world that idea of Moloch and conformity has taken on another level because since 9/11 again we?ve had a closing of the culture where artists who speak out ? whether it?s the Dixie Chicks or others ? find themselves taken off the radio and where you have Bush?s spokespeople say its really important now after 9/11 that people watch what they do and watch what they say. So again that idea of breaking out of that kind of cultural, political, economic, militaristic conformity finds a new relevance in today?s world and I think that?s one of the brilliant aspects of Howl ? that different parts of the poem can always come around in its relevance. READING: end of Moloch SOUND ? crowd applauds MUSIC READING: Ginsberg ?I?m with you in Rockland?? BOB ROSENTHAL: Howl was dedicated to Carl Solomon who was ? a fellow writer who Allen met during an almost one-year stay at a NYS psychiatric hospital. Allen was avoiding a little time in jail for letting his roommates bring stolen goods into his apartment. But Carl was always in and out of hospitals. He really did have some serious issues. READING BOB OSENTHAL: But Carl was a bright student of French surrealism and Russian literature and they met in the mental hospital almost as in a Russian novel ? two people meeting in the frozen steppes of Siberia. READING: More Rockland BOB ROSENTHAL: Allen?s mother had a psychosis ? a very severe paranoid schizophrenic. And it gave Allen a special affinity ? maybe even a genetic affinity with a disarrangement of the senses. READING BOB ROSENTHAL: Often, people feeling that would send Allen letters that were six pages long, single-spaced, filled with tight handwriting that I couldn?t read. And when Allen came back from a trip, those were the letters he would read first. He would pour over them ? connect the thoughts and make sense out of them. READING: End of Rockland BOB ROSENTHAL: I think Howl is in the Whitmanic tradition where Walt Whitman was one of the first poets to place himself behind the reader, looking over the reader?s shoulder as the reader reads him on the page and kind of nudging him, saying, I?m with you whether you like it or not, I?m with you. And Allen?s like that. He?s taking that from Whitman and he is with us. But also, when I hear Howl read by other voices and other strong readers of poetry, I start to hear the cadences of the prophets. So in that sense, if I could live long enough or teleport myself 1000 years into the future and go into the House of Worship, whatever that might be like, who knows? There might be the Book of Ginsberg right next to the Book of Daniel, the Book of Isaiah. MUSIC: Holy Choir ? from Thompkin Square park event ELIOT KATZ: ?It?s not just a quick declaration of ?everything is holy.? It comes as part of a process and to me it?s a visionary process and it does what the Global Justice movement does which is to say: Another or better world is possible. And the idea is: it is possible to create a better world and if we were to create a better world we would see there is holiness within it ? including that deep nugget of our soul is holy. More Holy ELIOT KATZ: Howl embraces new progressive thought of its time and amplified those energies for future generations in a way that was very powerful ? in a way that really helped to inspire young people of Allen?s era. And it continues to influence musicians and activists today. So there?s this challenge to today?s poets. How do we address our times in a way that amplifies progressive energies for our generation and future generations. How do we do it as effectively as Allen did it in Howl? I don?t have the answer for that or I would?ve written that poem or I could tell you which poems do that. But I also think those issues of opposing war, of promoting a more passionate sensibility, of promoting economic fairness ? that we can really have a world with less poverty and war, cleaner air and water, with more civil rights and civil liberties in the world. Howl ? Howl - The issues of Howl are still current issues. There?s a phrase in Howl, in the poem, that says, ?Good to eat a thousand years.? And I do think that Howl as a poem will be good to eat a thousand years. It?ll continue to inspire poets and activists for many generations. READING: end of Holy Chorus Reading ?Elegy for Allen? ? Eliot Katz Sound DS: How soon after Allen died did you write that? EK: I think it was a couple of weeks. DS: I was thinking of the end of Howl where he repeats the refrain ?I?m with you in Rockland, I?m with you in Rockland.? Does Ginsberg stay with you? EK: Absolutely. He was such an important teacher and friend to me. One thing he taught me was that one way to edit poetry is to picture the way different people you know whould read the poem by picturing their eyes on your shoulders. So when I?m looking at a first draft of a poem one of the things I do is imagine, What would Allen say if he was looking at this poem on my shoulders? And that?s one of those internal voices, internal eyes that I use when I look at my own poems. And I?m just always thinking about what Allen might think about something that happens in the world and of course wishing he was still around to ask those questions in person. We could really use his voice to help us think about today?s craziness. Sound of ice cream truck READING: Allen ? end of Part 1? mix in saxophone OUTRO: ?An Angel-headed Hipster?s Howl? featured Allen Ginsberg, Bob Rosenthal, Eliot Katz and Kurt Brown. Anne Waldman read Moloch. Edwin Torres led the International Howl. Fritz Van Orden performed the composition for saxophone by Carl Riehl. Steven Taylor conducted his Footnote to Howl for the Howl Festival Chorus. Special thanks to the Allen Ginsberg Trust. I?m David Swatling. READING ? Beginning of Part 1 & Radio line (1995) )