Walt Whitman Long Lines Essay

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked," Ginsberg immediately tears into razor-sharp words, intended to cut through the foggy vale of contemporary American society. "Howl" is a title that is truly definitive of this work, it seems to pierce the quiet night like a solitary wolf's cry, hell-bent on reaching the deepest part of the reader's mind. How does it do this? With astonishing architecture, the writer clearly bases his foundation on Walt Whitman's "Long lines" pushing themselves upon the margins of the page. In contrast to Whitman one does not seem to have time to ponder before moving on. To do this he abuses the meter of the work at first using a myriad of catalog such as "angels staggering on tenement
"Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo!", "Moloch the heavy judger of men!", "Moloch the vast stone of war!" The mixture of parallelism and punctuation makes it seem as one's inner voice is screaming the words in the readers head. Planting deep the seeds of distrust for institution of almost every kind. Section two seems a prelude and the next a crescendo! Ginsberg tightens up the lines in section three as he addresses his friend "Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland where you're madder than I am, I'm with you in Rockland where you must feel very strange" Ginsberg applies the use of the phrase "I'm with you in Rockland" up until the end of the work as he widens out the length of his lines to conclude, giving the work almost a frenzied symphonic feel, as he seems to try to reassure his friend. This is fitting due to the fact that Solomon himself embodies the message of the poem as a whole. Ginsberg easily obtains his goal of pulling of a work that seems to come out of a furious mans mouth straight to the readers ears. Leaving the reader in the end to behold the howl of Ginsberg