Allen Ginsberg reading ‘Howl’ in Portland is being released
It was announced this morning on Oregon Live that the first recording of Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ that took place in a dormitory common room at Reed College on Valentine’s Day in 1956. The recording of the performance sat forgotten in a box at the college’s Hauser Memorial Library until 2008, when historian John Suiter stumbled upon the tape.
Born Irwin Allen Ginsberg on June 3, 1926 in Newark, New Jersey, Allan Ginsberg became one of the most respected Beat writers and acclaimed American poets of his generation. Ginsberg first came to public attention in 1956 with the publication of Howl and other poems. “Howl,” a long-lined poem in the tradition of Walt Whitman, is an outcry of rage and despair against a destructive, abusive society. It stunned the San Francisco Police Department because of the graphic sexual language of the poem, they declared the book obscene and arrested publisher, poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
It wasn’t until November 1966 when Ginsberg penned Atlantic Monthly piece – “The Great Marijuana Hoax: First Manifesto to End The Bringdown” that he became a public figure in the fight for cannabis reform. The manifesto advocates for reformation by explaining the paranoia behing smoking weed in the U.S. prior to the 1967 summer of love.
“The anxiety was directly traceable to fear of being apprehended and treated as a deviant criminal; put thru the hassle of social disapproval, ignominious Kafkian tremblings in vast court buildings coming to be judged, the helplessness of being overwhelmed by force or threat of deadly force and put in brick & iron cell”
Allan Ginsberg, The Great Marijuana Hoax: First Manifesto to End The Bringdown
The manifesto reaches beyond the Prohibition of Cannabis and addresses drug policy reform as a whole. It states “drugs” as being a useful tool for better understanding our ability to perceive the world around us and explore “different possibilities and modes of consciousness”.
Ginsberg might have been an American by birth, but through his extensive travel he developed a global consciousness that greatly affected his writings and viewpoint. He parlayed his fame and network of connections into a modestly successful career in music. Long after he succumbed to liver cancer in 1997, his life and writings continue to be of great interest today. Almost all of his books remain in print. His poems appear regularly in anthologies around the world, and his photographs are constantly recycled in books and magazines. Universities today offer Ginsberg and Beat Generation courses.
On April 21, the niche record label Ominvore will release the recording, titled: “Allen Ginsberg at Reed College – The First Recorded Reading of Howl and Other Poems.” Listen to an excerpt below: