Allen Ginsberg in Hyde Park in 1967
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Campaigning in America photo Neil Libbert
I
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving
hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an
angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the
starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the
supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of
cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan
angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Ar-
kansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,
Howl
for Carl Solomon
San Francisco 1955-1956
Originally published in 'Howl and other poems' by
Citylights Books on November 1st 1956
C Copyright Allen Ginsberg
for a short unconnected Allen Ginsberg soundbite >click here< (best on broadband-)