"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness..."…
the hitherto forbidden content (drugs, mental illness, religion, homosexuality) emerged, Jack Kerouac – two years prior to On the Road – was the first to realise the magnitude of what was happening. Sitting on the side of the low stage, he began to punctuate Ginsberg’s Whitmanesque-meets-jazz rhythms by banging his empty wine jug and, at the end of each long line, shouting “GO!” Soon, the entire audience joined in … their encouraging chants of “GO! GO! GO!” driving Ginsberg to a shamanic momentum and creating a tribal unity between audience and poet. By the time he finished, Ginsberg was in tears. Everyone in the room knew they’d witnessed a rare moment of duende – that mysterious higher state brought on by a burst of genuine inspiration – and henceforth nothing would be the same again.
On October 7th 1955 and on the occasion of its first reading, a battle cry was sounded and the Beat Generation was born.
To hear Allen Ginsberg reading 'Howl' click here.
