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

 

 

 

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