Society is capable of strange evils, like burning books or banning them from curriculum. Society can also convict people of thought crimes, because words have a great deal of power. Today, we are going to look at the trial of the poem “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg.

Poetry Readings: “Cops Don’t Allow No Renaissance Here”

Allen Ginsberg hadn’t even started his career as an influential Beat poet (the post-war Baby Boomer radicals) when he got himself into trouble. After giving a reading of his poem “Howl” at the art house Six Gallery in North Beach, San Francisco on Oct. 7 ,1955, Ginsberg was accused of obscenity.

Publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti had read “Howl” before Ginsberg presented it at the gallery that night, and he knew it was a transformative piece. As such, “Howl” is a poem that is technically challenging and impressive in its message. Ginsberg was able to adeptly use his influence with Whitman and Blake and use an amalgamated style to convey new themes. This newness resonated with people of the age.”

“… I knew the world had been waiting for this poem, for this apocalyptic message to be articulated. It was in the air, waiting to be captured in speech. The repressive, conformist, racist, homophobic world of the 1950s cried out for it.”

Ferlinghetti

The reading event featured other notable poets and was a smashing success for the San Francisco poetry scene. It also launched Ginsberg’s career. According to Ferlinghetti, after hearing the poem, and in mimicking Ralph Waldo Emerson’s message to Walt Whitman after hearing “Leaves of Grass,” he sent Ginsberg a Western Union telegram that read: “I greet you at the beginning of a great career. When do we get the manuscript?” (Found SF).

Ferlinghetti called the 29-year-old Beat poet soon after to publish “Howl” in City Lights in 1956. After the poem’s publication in paperback, authorities promptly arrested Ferlinghetti and book seller Shigeyoshi Murao on obscenity charges. The book featured explicit four-letter-words and homosexual overtones, which the moral sensors of the 1950s disliked. After the police made their arrests, one local newspaper headline read: “Cops Don’t Allow No Renaissance Here.”

Opinions on the Poem’s Impact

Ferlinghetti wrote that “Howl” was targeted for more than just being “obscene by cops.” He said that it was because, “it attacked the bare roots of our dominant culture, the very Moloch heart of our consumer society.” As stated by Andrew Spacey in his analysis of “Howl”: the poem is a “game-changer” because it adequately captured the feelings of the era. He writes: “… it expressed for the first time a modern psychological angst, an urban existence fueled by drugs, jazz, travel and expansion,” Spacey writes (Spacey).

The poem was a departure from what most writers and poetry consumers considered verse. It revolutionized an approach to writing. While some wrote letters criticizing Ginsberg’s poem, writers, poets, and artists unanimously criticized the trial. They said it was unnecessary censorship because the court was dealing with a true work of art.

“Mark S. Wittenberg, in the San Francisco Chronicle, represented this perspective. He stated: ‘I should say that when (Federal Collector of Customs) saw too many four letter words, he neither saw nor read anything else. Allen Ginsberg’s poem may be a lot of things…but it is not obscene” (Rehlaender).

The Trial of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”

The trial began in Aug. 1957, and the defense had some support. Lawyer Jake Ehrlich, and Lawrence Speiser and Albert Bendich of the ACLU defended Ferlinghetti and Murao. Meanwhile, Ginsberg, free from arrest, wrote letters of support from outside the judicial circus.

The overall argument from The State of California, represented by Ralph McIntosh, was that the words would harm the American people in mediums other than poetry. Thus, the poetry must be banned, because if it appeared on the radio then it would be inappropriate. Both sets of lawyers brought up expert witnesses to discuss the poem as art or as offensive material.

“Ehrlich closed by arguing the poem is only obscene if you purposefully read it that way; he argued that just because the words may be vulgar, does not mean the message is, so this should not detract from the literature’s value. Ginsberg wrote this way to detail HIS life, HIS experiences, and it is not intended to corrupt readers.”

Howl and Beyond

After spending time in consideration, Judge Clayton W. Horn ruled that the poem could not be obscene because such a ruling with tamper with the First Amendment. Horn’s ruling was important because it made way for the publication of previously censored works, such as Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence and Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller.

Works Cited

Rehlaender, Jamie. “A Howl of Free Expression: the 1957 Howl Obscenity Trial and Sexual Liberation.” Portland State University. March 19, 2015.

Spacey, Andrew. “Analysis of Poem Howl by Allen Ginsberg.” Owlcation. Jan. 10, 2020. Web.

“Howl and Beyond.” URL: https://howlandbeyond.weebly.com/the-obscenity-trial.html