Howling and other poems

"Howl" is the first of Allen Ginsberg's epic long poems, which positioned him as a pioneer of American poetry in the late fifties and sixties after he read it in one of San Francisco's cafes. It was published in more than sixty editions and more than two million copies were sold, and hardly any American poetry collection is without "Howl," which is considered a breakthrough, in terms of vocal technique, in restoring the voice and the expansive, long poetic line to American fifties poetry, burdened with the mechanical academic breath that was taking its last breaths.