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Pacifica Radio Archives’ “From the Vault”
Each week the Pacifica Radio Archives chooses a program "From the Vault" of broadcasts in a half-hour program.
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked …” ~ Allen Ginsberg, from “Howl”
“Howl” by Allen Ginsberg is considered one of the greatest American poems ever written. Its author, not yet 30, joined the ranks of the great poets of the 20th Century, almost as soon as the poem was published. To this day, years after his death, he is arguably the most well known poet the United States has ever produced. He resides with Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allen Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and sits next to Bob Dylan.
He personified the “poet” in American minds: rebellious, promiscuous, liberal, intelligent, troubled. As Einstein personifies The Scientist, Ginsberg is The Poet.
This week on From the Vault we look back at the poem that made the man; We look at the poem that got people arrested for its controversial language when first published, and we do it without playing the poem in its entirety – since it is still illegal to air “Howl” on America’s airwaves without language edits.
