Howl for Carl Solomon

When he was younger, and I was younger, I used to know Allen Ginsberg,
a young poet living in Paterson, New Jersey, where he, son of a well-known
poet, had been born and grew up. He was physically slight of build and 
mentally much disturbed by the life which he had encountered about him 
during those first years after the First World War as it was exhibited to
him in and about New York City. He was always on the point of 'going away',
where it didn't seem to matter; he disturbed me, I never thought he'd live
to grow up and write and book of poems. His ability to survive, travel, and
go on writing astonishes me. That he has gone on developing and perfecting 
his art is no less astonishing to me.
	Now he turns up fifteen or twenty years later with an arresting. 
Literally, he has, from all the evidence, been through hell. On the way
he met a man named Carl Solomon with whom he shared among the teeth and
excrement of this life something that cannot be described but in the words
he has used to describe it. It is a howl of defeat. Not defeat at all for
he has gone through defeat as if it were an ordinary experience, a trivial
experience. Everyone in this life is defeated but a man, if he be a man,
is not defeated. 
	It is the poet, Allen Ginsberg, who has gone, in his own body, through
the horrifying experiences described from life in these pages. The wonder 
of the thing is not that he survived but that he, from the very depths, has
found a fellow whom he can love, a love he celebrates without looking aside
in these poems. Say what you will, he proves to us, in spite of the most 
debasing experiences that life can offer a man, the spirit of love survives
to ennoble our lives if we have the wit and the courage and the faith-and 
the art! to persist.
	It is the belief in the art of the poetry that has gone hand in hand 
with this man into his Golgotha, from that charnel house, similar in every
way, to that of the Jews in the past war. But this is in our own country, our
own fondest purlieus.  We are blind and live our blind lives out in blindness.
Poets are damned but they are not blind, they see with the eyes of the angels.
This poet sees through and all around the horrors he partakes of in the very 
intimate details of his poem. He avoids nothing but experiences it to the hilt. 
He contains it.  Claims it at his own-and, we believe, laughs at it and has the 
time and affrontery to love a fellow of his choice and record that love in a well-made
poem. Hold back the edges of your gowns, Ladies, we going through hell.


William Carlos Williams