HOWL

Cadets read “Howl”, February 19, 1991, Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, Virginia. 

“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, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz” - Allen Ginsberg, Howl

I have a soft cover first edition of Ginsberg's 'Howl' and as a poem it meant and means a  great deal to me. It grabbed me as a youngster and I may have been a teenager when I first read it [1970?]. What I don't understand is quite what these recruits were doing being made to read it in class. Anyone?

I may have said in the previous issues of 'Ways of Seeing' that I wander around the t'internet picking up pictures as I go and apart for the info mentioned I have no idea what is going on here or whose photograph it is. If it is yours and wish a credit just let me know and if you want it taking down please ask me . . . . .