Editing Howl (poem) (section)

===Part I===

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! style="background:#FFF6D6;"|Line
! colspan="2" style="background:#EEF6D6;" | Reference
|-
|"who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw [[Mohammedan]] angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated."
|This is a direct reference to a story told to Ginsberg by Kerouac about poet [[Philip Lamantia]]'s "celestial adventure" after reading the [[Quran]].<ref name = Original124>Allen Ginsberg. "Howl: Original Draft Facsimile, Transcript & Variant Versions, Fully Annotated by Author, with Contemporaneous Correspondence, Account of First Public Reading, Legal Skirmishes, Precursor Texts & Bibliography". Ed. Barry Miles. Harper Perennial, 1995. {{ISBN|0-06-092611-2}}. p. 124.</ref>
|-
|"Who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating [[Arkansas]] and [[William Blake|Blake]]—light tragedies among the scholars of war" and "who thought they were only mad when [[Baltimore]] gleamed in supernatural ecstasy"
|Ginsberg had an auditory hallucination in 1948 of William Blake reading his poems "[[Ah! Sun-flower]]", "[[The Sick Rose]]", and "[[The Little Girl Lost]]". Ginsberg said the hallucination revealed to him the interconnectedness of all existence. He said his drug experimentation in many ways was an attempt to recapture that feeling.<ref>''Original Draft'', pp. 125, 128</ref><ref>Lewis Hyde. ''On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg.'' University of Michigan Press, 1984 {{ISBN|978-0-472-06353-6}}, p. 6.</ref>
|-
|"Who were expelled from the academy for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull"
|Part of the reason Ginsberg was suspended in his sophomore year from [[Columbia University]] was that he wrote obscenities on his dirty dorm room windows.<ref>{{cite web |title=Allen Ginsberg, 1926-1997 |url=http://www.lib.unc.edu/rbc/beats/ginsberg.html |publisher=The University of North Carolina |location=[[Chapel Hill, North Carolina|Chapel Hill]] |archive-date=13 October 2004 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041013041801/http://www.lib.unc.edu/rbc/beats/ginsberg.html}} Excerpt from ''Lines Drawn in the Sand: The Life and Writings of Allen Ginsberg'' (2004)</ref> He suspected the cleaning woman of being an [[anti-Semite]] because she never cleaned the windows in his room, and he expressed this opinion in explicit terms by writing "Fuck the Jews" and drawing a [[swastika]] on the windows. He also wrote a phrase implying the university president had no [[testicle]]s.<ref>''Original Draft'', p. 132</ref>{{sfn|Miles|2001|p=57}}
|-
|"who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall"
|[[Lucien Carr]] burned his insanity record, along with $20, at his mother's insistence.<ref>Allen Ginsberg. ''The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice: First Journals and Poems 1937–1952''. Ed. Juanita Lieberman-Plimpton and Bill Morgan. Da Capo Press, 2006. {{ISBN|0-306-81462-5}}. p. 58.</ref>
|-
|"...&nbsp;poles of Canada and [[Paterson, New Jersey|Paterson]]..."
|Kerouac was [[French-Canadian]] from [[Lowell, Massachusetts]]; Ginsberg grew up in Paterson, New Jersey.{{sfn|Miles|2001|p=1}}
|-
|"who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's floated out and sat through the stale beer afternoons in desolate Fugazzi's..."
|[[Bickford's (restaurant)|Bickford's]] and Fugazzi's were New York spots where the Beats hung out. Ginsberg worked briefly at Fugazzi's.<ref>''Original Draft'', p. 125</ref>{{sfn|Raskin|2004|p=134}}
|-
|"...&nbsp;Tangerian bone-grindings&nbsp;..." "...&nbsp;Tangiers to boys&nbsp;..." and "Holy Tangiers!"
|William S. Burroughs lived in [[Tangier, Morocco]] at the time Ginsberg wrote "Howl". He also experienced withdrawal from [[heroin]], which he wrote about in several letters to Ginsberg.<ref name = Original126>''Original Draft'', p. 126</ref>
|-
|"who studied [[Plotinus]] [[Edgar Allan Poe|Poe]] [[St. John of the Cross]] [[telepathy]] and [[Bebop|bop]] [[kabbalah]] because the cosmos instinctively vibrated at their feet in [[Kansas]]"
|Mystics and forms of mysticism in which Ginsberg at one time had an interest.<ref name = "Original126"/>
|-
|"who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico".
|Both a reference to John Hoffman, a friend of Philip Lamantia and Carl Solomon, who died in Mexico, and a reference to ''[[Under the Volcano]]'' by [[Malcolm Lowry]].<ref name = "Original124"/>
|-
|"weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down"
|A reference to a protest staged by [[Judith Malina]], [[Julian Beck]], and other members of [[The Living Theatre]].<ref name = Original128>''Original Draft'', p. 128</ref>
|-
|"who bit detectives in the neck&nbsp;... dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts." Also, from "who&nbsp;... fell out of the subway window" to "the blast of colossal steam whistles".
|A specific reference to [[Bill Cannastra]], who actually did most of these things and died when he "fell out of the subway window".<ref name = "Original128"/>{{sfn|Miles|2001|p=189}}<ref>Bill Morgan. ''I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg''. Penguin, 2006. {{ISBN|978-0-14-311249-5}}, p. 128.</ref>
|-
|"Saintly motorcyclists"
|A reference to [[Marlon Brando]] and his biker persona in ''[[The Wild One]]''.<ref name = "Original126"/>
|-
|From "Who copulated ecstatic and insatiate" to "Who went out whoring through [[Colorado]] in myriad stolen night-cars, N. C. secret hero of these poems". Also, from "who barreled down the highways of the past" to "& now [[Denver, Colorado|Denver]] is lonesome for her heroes"
|A reference to [[Neal Cassady]] (N.C.) who lived in Denver, Colorado, and had a reputation for being sexually voracious, as well as stealing cars.<ref>''Original Draft'', p. 126–127</ref>{{sfn|Miles|2001|p=186}}{{sfn|Raskin|2004|p=137}}
|-
|"who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the showbank docks waiting for a door in the [[East River]] to open to a room full of steamheat and [[opium]]"
|A specific reference to [[Herbert Huncke]]'s condition after being released from [[Riker's Island]].{{sfn|Miles|2001|p=186}}<ref>''Original Draft'', p. 133</ref>
|-
|"...&nbsp;and rose to build harpsichords in their lofts&nbsp;..."
|Friend [[Bill Keck]] built harpsichords. Ginsberg had a conversation with Keck's wife shortly before writing "Howl".{{sfn|Miles|2001|p=189}}<ref name = Original134>''Original Draft'', p. 134</ref>{{sfn|Morgan|Peters|2006|p=34}}
|-
|"who coughed on the sixth floor of [[Harlem]] crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology"
|This is a reference to the apartment in which Ginsberg lived when he had his Blake vision. His roommate, Russell Durgin, was a theology student and kept his books in orange crates.<ref name = "Original134"/>{{sfn|Miles|2001|p=97}}
|-
|"who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot with eternity outside of time&nbsp;..."
|A reference to Ginsberg's Columbia classmate [[Louis Simpson]], an incident that happened during a brief stay in a mental institution for [[post-traumatic stress disorder]].{{sfn|Miles|2001|p=186}}<ref name = "Original134"/>
|-
|"who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on [[Madison Avenue]]&nbsp;... the [[nitroglycerine]] shrieks of the fairies of advertising"
|Ginsberg worked as a market researcher for Towne-Oller Associates in San Francisco, on Montgomery Street, not Madison Avenue.{{sfn|Ginsberg|1995a|p=5}}
|-
|"who jumped off the [[Brooklyn Bridge]]&nbsp;..."
|A specific reference to [[Tuli Kupferberg]].<ref name = "Original128"/>{{sfn|Raskin|2004|p=135}}
|-
|"who crashed through their minds in jail&nbsp;..."
|A reference to [[Jean Genet]]'s {{lang|fr|Le Condamné à mort}} (poem translated as "The Man Sentenced to Death").<ref name = "Original128"/>
|-
|"who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender [[Buddha]] or Tangiers to boys or [[Southern Pacific Transportation Company|Southern Pacific]] to the black locomotive or [[Harvard]] to [[Narcissus (mythology)|Narcissus]] to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave"
|Many of the Beats went to Mexico City to "cultivate" a drug "habit", but Ginsberg claims this is a direct reference to Burroughs and Bill Garver, though Burroughs lived in Tangiers at the time<ref>Allen Hibbard. ''Conversations with William S. Burroughs''. University Press of Mississippi, 2000. {{ISBN|1-57806-183-0}}. p. xix.</ref> (as Ginsberg says in "America": "Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister"<ref>{{cite book |last=Ginsberg |first=Allen |chapter=America |title=Howl and Other Poems |location=San Francisco |publisher=City Lights Books |lccn=56008587 |year=1959 |orig-date=1956 |page=39}}</ref>). [[Rocky Mount, North Carolina]], is where Jack Kerouac's sister lived (as recounted in ''[[The Dharma Bums]]'').<ref>David Creighton. ''Ecstasy of the Beats: On the Road to Understanding''. Dundurn, 2007. {{ISBN|1-55002-734-4}}. p. 229.</ref> Also, Neal Cassady was a brakeman for the Southern Pacific. [[John Hollander]] was an alumnus of Harvard. Ginsberg's mother Naomi lived near [[Woodlawn Cemetery (Bronx)|Woodlawn Cemetery]].{{sfn|Raskin|2004|p=137}}<ref name = "Original134"/>
|-
|"Accusing the radio of hypnotism&nbsp;..."
|A reference to Ginsberg's mother Naomi, who suffered from [[paranoid schizophrenia]]. It also refers to [[Antonin Artaud]]'s reaction to [[Electroconvulsive therapy|shock therapy]] and his "To Have Done with the Judgement of God", which Solomon introduced to Ginsberg at Columbia Presbyterian Psychological Institute.<ref name = Original130>''Original Draft'', p. 130</ref><ref name = Theado53>Matt Theado. ''The Beats: A Literary Reference''. Carroll & Graf, 2003. {{ISBN|0-7867-1099-3}}. p. 53</ref>
|-
|From "who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on [[Dadaism]]&nbsp;..." to "resting briefly in [[catatonia]]"
|A specific reference to Carl Solomon. Initially this final section went straight into what is now Part III, which is entirely about Carl Solomon. Dadaism is an art movement emphasizing nonsense and irrationality. In the poem, it is the subject of a lecture that is interrupted by students throwing potato salad at the professors. This ironically mirrored the playfulness of the movement but in a darker context. A post-WWI cultural movement, Dada stood for 'anti-art', it was against everything that art stood for. Founded in Zurich, Switzerland. The meaning of the word means two different definitions; "hobby horse" and "father", chosen randomly. The Dada movement spread rapidly.<ref name = Original131>''Original Draft'', p. 131</ref>{{sfn|Miles|2001|pp=117, 187}}<ref>Morgan, p. 118</ref>
|-
|"Pilgrim's State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid halls&nbsp;..." and "I'm with you in Rockland"
|These are mental institutions associated with either Ginsberg's mother Naomi or Carl Solomon: Pilgrim State Hospital and Rockland State Hospital in New York and [[Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital]] in [[New Jersey]]. Ginsberg met Solomon at Columbia Presbyterian Psychological Institute, but "Rockland" was frequently substituted for "rhythmic euphony".<ref name = "Original130"/><ref name = "Theado53"/><ref>Morgan, p. 13</ref>
|-
|"with mother finally ******"
|Ginsberg admitted that the deletion here was an expletive. He left it purposefully elliptical "to introduce appropriate element of uncertainty". In later readings, many years after he was able to distance himself from his difficult history with his mother, he reinserted the word "fucked".<ref name = "Original131"/>
|-
|"obsessed with a sudden flash of the [[alchemy]] of the use of the ellipse the catalog the meter (alt: variable measure) & the vibrating plane". Also, from "who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space" to "what might be left to say in time come after death".
|This is a recounting of Ginsberg's discovery of his own style and the debt he owed to his strongest influences. He discovered the use of the ellipse from [[haiku]] and the shorter poetry of [[Ezra Pound]] and [[William Carlos Williams]]. "The catalog" is a reference to Walt Whitman's long line style which Ginsberg adapted. "The meter"/"variable measure" is a reference to Williams' insistence on the necessity of measure. Though "Howl" may seem formless, Ginsberg claimed it was written in a concept of measure adapted from Williams' idea of breath, the measure of lines in a poem being based on the breath in reading. Ginsberg's breath in reading, he said, happened to be longer than Williams'. "The vibrating plane" is a reference to Ginsberg's discovery of the "eyeball kick" in his study of Cézanne.<ref>''Original Draft'', pp. 130–131</ref>{{sfn|Miles|2001|p=187}}<ref>Allen Ginsberg. "A Letter to Eberhart". ''Beat Down to Your Soul''. Ed. Ann Charters. Penguin, 2001.{{ISBN|0-14-100151-8}}, p. 121.</ref>
|-
|"Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus"/"omnipotent, eternal father God"
|This was taken directly from [[Cézanne]].<ref name = "Original130"/><ref>Hyde, p. 2</ref>
|-
|"to recreate the measure and syntax of poor human prose&nbsp;..."
|A reference to the tremendous influence Kerouac and his ideas of "Spontaneous Prose" had on Ginsberg's work and specifically this poem.<ref>''Original Draft'', p. 136</ref><ref>Allen Ginsberg. ''Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews 1958–1996''. Ed. David Carter. Perennial, 2001, p. 291</ref>
|-
|"what might be left to say in time come after death"
|A reference to [[Louis Zukofsky]]'s translation of [[Catullus]]: "What might be left to say anew in time after death&nbsp;..." Also a reference to a section from the final pages of ''[[Visions of Cody]]'', "I'm writing this book because we're all going to die", and so on.<ref name = "Original130"/>
|-
|"eli eli lama sabachthani"
|One of the [[sayings of Jesus on the cross]], also [[Psalm 22]]:1: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" The phrase in Psalms was transliterated as "azavtani"; however, Ginsberg stayed true to how Jesus translated the phrase in the Gospels. The phrase used by Ginsberg was translated properly as "Why have you sacrificed me?" This ties into the themes of misfortune and religious adulation of conformity through the invocation of Moloch in Part II. Though Ginsberg grew up in an [[agnostic]] household, he was very interested in his Jewish roots and in other concepts of spiritual transcendence. Although later Ginsberg was a devoted Buddhist, at this time he was only beginning to study Buddhism along with other forms of spirituality.<ref name = "Original134"/>
|}