From "Howl" Reflections

On Thursday, September 10th, we, as a class, read five poems. The theme of these poems were represented as a sort of darkness, either through despair or night or death. Of these five poems, one stuck out particularly to me simply because I understood it more easily. Often times I find myself reading poems that have awkward wording when putting stanzas together. To me it seems like they use poem as a license to write irregularly and overuse metaphors. This is simply a subjective view towards poems. No doubt they could be considered works of art and literary prophesy. However, I see differently.

Yet, From "Howl", caught me by surprise. I, as many, have seen people who I knew, who were brilliant, be brought low by drugs. The first line of this poem is what grabbed me. "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,... looking for an angry fix." So often this is true, not only years ago, but now and in the future to come. This poem did not use words such as Night City did. "Diaphanous lympth, bright turgid blood, spatter outward in clots of gold." Instead it used words I can more closely relate to, "who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high."

The portrayed darkness in words that I can grasp easily. Poverty, tatters, hallucinating, angry, and cowered. These are words that take one thing, drugs, and creates a definitely dark persona that is injected in every line of the poem. These people are killing themselves, their bodies and their minds, with a constant intake of "with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares." I believe this author grasped the disparity of drug abuse and articulated it with clarity and truth to the nature of such a dark addiction.