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,
Extract of ‘Howl’ by Allen Ginsberg........read the full poem at http://www.wussu.com/poems/agh.htm
According to one reviewer “drugs contributed much to Ginsberg's poem. Howl would not have come into existence without many of the drugs that started the new mindset of the beat generation such as Peyote, LSD, and DMT” (Source http://www.amazon.com/Howl-Allen-Ginsberg/dp/0060926112) and “It is the poet, Allen Ginsberg, who has gone, in his own body, through the horrifying experiences described from life in these pages” (Source http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/ginsberg/howl.htm)
This was my view also – and even if the author never took drugs – the poem clearly has a lot of first hand references to drugs and drug taking, I wonder if you could write that well about a subject if you have not actually had the experiences yourself? Though it was written as a kind of early dub poetry – i.e. to be spoken aloud or performed as opposed to read from the page, it was really unique in its time and forged a new genre. Perhaps drug taking opens the mind to new experiences – it’s just like writing down your dreams – maybe the mind works best when it’s allowed to wonder.
