Howl and Other Poems

US: City Lights Publishers, 1959. Paperback. Good. A copy that has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. The landmark, original publication of Allen Ginsberg's HOWL & Other Poems! HOWL & Other Poems, the prophetic book that launched the Beat Generation, w as published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti at City Lights Books in 1956. Conside red the single most influential work of post-WWII United States poetry, the City Lights edition of HOWL has remained in print for more than 60 years, with well over 1,000,000 copies in print. A strident critique of middle-class complacency, consumerism, and capitalis t militarism, HOWL also celebrates the pleasures and freedoms of the physic al world, including a tribute to homosexual love. In addition to "Howl," po ems in the book include: "A Supermarket in California," "Sunflower Sutra," "America," "In the Baggage Room at Greyhound," "Transcription of Organ Musi c," and "Wild Orphan," among others. A History of HOWL: City Lights founder Lawrence Ferlinghetti first heard Allen Ginsberg read " Howl" at the Six Gallery event in San Francisco, 1955, which featured write rs Philip Lamantia, Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, and Michael McClure, introd uced by poet Kenneth Rexroth. Jack Kerouac was present, but did not read, e ncouraging and cheering the other poets on. Ferlinghetti was so impressed b y Ginsberg's performance, he immediately telegrammed him, referencing Ralph Waldo Emerson's response to Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, "I greet you a t the beginning of a great career. When do I get the manuscript?" When the first edition of HOWL arrived from its British print.