SOURCE: Hollander, John. “Poetry Chronicle.” Partisan Review 24, no. 2 (spring 1957): 296-8.

In the following excerpt, Hollander describes Howl and Other Poems as both “tiresome” and exemplifying real talent.

It is only fair to Allen Ginsberg, however, to remark on the utter lack of decorum of any kind in his dreadful little volume [Howl]. I believe that the title of his long poem, “Howl,” is meant to be a noun, but I can't help taking it as an imperative. The poem itself is a confession of the poet's faith, done into some 112 paragraph-like lines, in the ravings of a lunatic friend (to whom it is dedicated), and in the irregularities in the lives of those of his friends who populate his rather disturbed pantheon. Here is the poem's beginning:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at...