Editing Howl (poem) (section)

==Overview and structure==
The poem consists of 112 paragraph-like lines,<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pIN1DwAAQBAJ&q=112+lines+is+howl+ginsberg+paragraph&pg=PA74|title=Poetry Across the Curriculum: New Methods of Writing Intensive Pedagogy for U.S. Community College and Undergraduate Education|date=2018|publisher=Brill|isbn=978-90-04-38067-7|language=en}}</ref> which are organized into three parts, with an additional footnote.

===Part I===
Called by Ginsberg "a lament for the Lamb in America with instances of remarkable lamb-like youths", Part I is perhaps the best known, and communicates scenes, characters, and situations drawn from Ginsberg's personal experience as well as from the community of poets, artists, political [[Political radicalism|radicals]], [[jazz]] musicians, [[drug addiction|drug addicts]], and psychiatric patients whom he had encountered in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Ginsberg refers to these people, who were underrepresented outcasts in what the poet believed to be an oppressively conformist and materialistic era, as "the best minds of my generation". He describes their experiences in graphic detail, openly discussing drug use and homosexual activity at multiple points.

Most lines in this section contain the fixed base "who". In his "Notes for ''Howl'' and Other Poems", Ginsberg writes: "I depended on the word 'who' to keep the beat, a base to keep measure, return to and take off from again onto another streak of invention".<ref name="Notes_for_Howl"/>

===Part II===
Ginsberg says that Part II, in relation to Part I, "names the monster of mental consciousness that preys on the Lamb". Part II is about the state of industrial civilization, characterized in the poem as "[[Moloch]]". Ginsberg was inspired to write Part II during a period of [[peyote]]-induced visionary consciousness in which he saw a hotel façade as a monstrous and horrible visage which he identified with that of Moloch, the [[Bible|Biblical]] [[cult image|idol]] in [[Leviticus]] to whom the [[Canaanites]] [[human sacrifice|sacrificed]] children.<ref name="notes">Ginsberg, Allen. "Notes Written on Finally Recording 'Howl'". ''Deliberate Prose: Selected Essays 1952–1995''. Ed. Bill Morgan. New York: Harper Collins, 2000.</ref>

Ginsberg intends that the characters he portrays in Part I be understood to have been sacrificed to this idol. Moloch is also the name of an industrial, [[demon]]ic figure in [[Fritz Lang]]'s ''[[Metropolis (1927 film)|Metropolis]]'', a film that Ginsberg credits with influencing "Howl, Part II" in his annotations for the poem (see especially ''Howl: Original Draft Facsimile, Transcript & Variant Versions''). Most lines in this section contain the fixed base "Moloch". Ginsberg says of Part II, "Here the long line is used as a [[stanza]] form broken within into exclamatory units punctuated by a base repetition, Moloch."<ref name="Notes_for_Howl"/>

===Part III===
Part III, in relation to Parts I and II, is "a litany of affirmation of the Lamb in its glory", according to Ginsberg. It is directly addressed to [[Carl Solomon]], whom Ginsberg met during a brief stay at a psychiatric hospital in 1949; called "[[Rockland Psychiatric Center|Rockland]]" in the poem, it was actually Columbia Presbyterian Psychological Institute. This section is notable for its refrain, "I'm with you in Rockland", and represents something of a turning point away from the grim tone of the "Moloch"-section. Of the structure, Ginsberg says Part III is "pyramidal, with a graduated longer response to the fixed base".<ref name="notes"/>

===Footnote===
The closing section of the poem is the "Footnote", characterized by its repetitive "Holy!" mantra, an ecstatic assertion that everything is holy. Ginsberg says, "I remembered the archetypal rhythm of Holy Holy Holy weeping in a bus on Kearny Street, and wrote most of it down in notebook there.&nbsp;... I set it as 'Footnote to Howl' because it was an extra variation of the form of Part II."<ref name="notes"/>

===Rhythm===
The frequently quoted and often parodied<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.rawstory.com/2013/01/howl-at-the-internet/ |title='Howl' at the Internet |last=Carpentier |first=Megan |date=29 January 2013 |website=[[Raw Story]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |date=22 March 2000 |first=Thomas |last=Scoville |url=https://www.salon.com/2000/03/22/howl/ |title=Howl.com (with apologies to Allen Ginsberg) |website=[[Salon.com|Salon]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vJRnTI63jdEC&q=howl%20parody%20%22best%20minds%22&pg=PA57 |title=Guitar Highway Rose |first=Brigid |last=Lowry |date= 2006 |publisher=Macmillan |isbn=9780312342968 |via=Google Books}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jj-colagrande/prowl-a-parody-on-miamis-_b_4805184.html|title="PROWL", a Parody on Miami's Transience and Eccentricities |last1=Colagrande |first1= J. J.|website=[[HuffPost]] |date=19 February 2014}}</ref> opening lines set the theme and rhythm for the poem:

{{blockquote|<poem>I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
Angel-headed [[hipster (1940s subculture)|hipster]]s burning for the ancient heavenly connection
to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,</poem>}}

Ginsberg's own commentary discusses the work as an experiment with the "long line". For example, Part I is structured as a single run-on sentence with a repetitive refrain dividing it up into breaths. Ginsberg said, "Ideally each line of 'Howl' is a single breath unit. My breath is long—that's the measure, one physical-mental inspiration of thought contained in the elastic of a breath."<ref name="notes"/>

On another occasion, he explained: "the line length ... you'll notice that they're all built on [[bebop|bop]]—you might think of them as a bop refrain—chorus after chorus after chorus—the ideal being, say, [[Lester Young]] in [[Kansas City, Missouri|Kansas City]] in 1938, blowing 72 choruses of '[[The Man I Love (song)|The Man I Love]]' until everyone in the hall was out of his head..."<ref name="baker">{{cite news |last=Baker |first=Jeff |date=12 February 2008 |newspaper=The Oregonian |url=http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/120279750587750.xml&coll=7 |title='Howl' tape gives Reed claim to first |archive-date=13 February 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080213134838/http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/120279750587750.xml&coll=7}}</ref>