I’m not very good at reading poetry. I have to speak it. Howl was a pleasure to recite. It has a very specific tempo. This tempo seems to bring a joy to what, when read, appears as a torrent of distasteful actions and events. Interestingly I really enjoyed this poem yet some might say it describes a horror far worse than that described in the article about Las Vegas by Tom Wolfe that we read last week- which I didn’t enjoy. I have a little background knowledge of the context of the poem and readily admit that I was looking forward to reading it; that probably helped a little. I recently read Jack Kerouac’s Dharma bums and it has probably been one of the most influential books I have ever read, it was just so easy to relate to a frustrated generation looking for fulfilment elsewhere that the society forced upon them, hell. Who isn’t? The poem captured the spirit of the period where physical acts were viewed as ultimate human freedom. The poem is a celebration of human encounter, of food, of sex, of drink; of reality.
I’m a little dubious about the link to Archigram. Is it that the work of Archigram is just another commentary on time and place? Did they believe in this stuff as ideal or inevitable? Was it positive or negative? For me Archigram is a group of gifted illustrators (but then I know very little about them) whereas Ginsberg and the beat generation represent something raw with more spirit and energy.
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