Below is Ginsberg’s first draft of part two of “Howl,” which he wrote at the bottom of a typed draft of part one.

The first draft of the poem is the beginning of what would become a longer poem, consisting of three inter-related sections and a final “Footnote.” The “Howl” manuscripts and typescripts in the Allen Ginsberg Papers document the formal development of the poem, tracing Ginsberg’s experiments with different structures and wording in each of the poem’s sections. Ginsberg’s reading of the first part of “Howl” at the Six Gallery is now part of Beat lore, memorialized by fellow Beat writer Jack Kerouac in Dharma Bums.

Ginsberg continued to revise the first section of the poem in the fall of 1955 and began work on the second section of the poem, before doing his first public reading of the poem at the Six Gallery in October. With its famous opening line, obscure references to fellow Beat writers, and graphic depictions of drug use and sexuality, Ginsberg’s poem railed against the conformity of 1950s America. The first draft of 'Howl' by Allen Ginsberg. Dedicated to Carl Solomon, whom Ginsberg met while they were both patients at the Columbia Psychiatric Institute in the early 1950s, “Howl”represented a turning point in Ginsberg’s artistic development, as he experimented with a longer line intended to be read in a single breath. Ginsberg composed the original seven-page draft of the poem in his apartment on Montgomery Street in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood in early August of 1955. In cooperation with the Allen Ginsberg Estate, Stanford Libraries has recently digitized Allen Ginsberg’s original drafts of “Howl,” providing a unique perspective on Ginsberg’s creative process and the creation of American literary classic.Īllen Ginsberg at his typewriter. No poem is more closely identified with the Beat Generation than Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl.” From its first public reading at the Six Gallery in San Francisco in October 1955 to the notorious obscenity trial that followed in the wake of its first publication in 1956, the poem is indelibly tied to the Beat Generation and their critique of the staid morals and customs of Eisenhower-era America.

Allen ginsberg poem howl