People, though, have forgotten John Diefenbaker, a prime minister vastly more interesting than the simulacra of corporate lemmings who have been running this country since the mid-Eighties. They have forgotten Charlotte Whitton, a mayor who makes Mel Lastman look like a retired refrigerator salesman. They have forgotten that in the Fifties the CBC routinely presented items like Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" in prime time, as well as dramas about contemporary public injustices rather than about injustices conveniently long past. They have forgotten that in the United States, television brought down Joe McCarthy.
In literature the Fifties had a certain edge to them, too. Today's writers have been absorbed into the giant publicity and distribution systems of modern global publishing. In the 1950s, though, people actually published books that got banned and seized by the police.
One such book was Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg, published in 1956 by the legendary City Lights Books of San Francisco. It was seized by U. S. Customs and by the San Francisco police, and was the subject of a long trial for obscenity (it was finally concluded that the book was not obscene).
These days, people don't get quite so upset about poetry. They don't really get emotional about anything. Contemporary life is basically a lock-step procession of zombies into the abyss. Having abandoned the use of our brains we have satisfied our need for guiding principles by adopting those sold to us by the same media which so effectively sell beer, tampons, and anything with the word light in it. The world is filled with dutiful citizens who spend their waking hours occupied with the thoughts "We must reduce the deficit; we must reduce the debt; I must save for my retirement."
These observations were inspired by a review that – thinking of the impending millennium, whenever that may be – I once conducted of poetry written in English during the twentieth century. It's frightfully refined, isn't it? Compare, for example, the horridly bloodless poems of James Kirkup to the highly raffish and scabrous life he vividly and engagingly recounts in the many volumes of his autobiography.
Certainly, great poetry was written in the twentieth century. There is the work of Wallace Stevens, for example, and one must admit that despite its superficial reserve it does have a distinct visceral aspect. Some – we repeat, some – of T. S. Eliot's work (or the work which he may have plagiarized) actually says something about reality, although something like "The Dry Salvages" deserves the name it is usually given around the literary department – "The Dry Heavages".
Nevertheless, the general run of poetry in the twentieth century is largely trivial. Poetic form has been abandoned, and what chiefly distinguishes poetry from prose these days is typography. Prose is written in paragraphs, while poetry is arranged differently on the page.
For example, on my daily trips in the funereal equipages of the Toronto Transit Commission, I have become acquainted with Poetry on the Way, a program which puts Canadian "poetry" in the place of advertising cards. The supposed poetry to which we are treated consists largely of trite and inelegant writing arranged in scattered blocks of print. Louis Dudek writes a couple of quick sentences about a seeming contradiction in his dogs' behaviour and then arranges them in arbitrary lines within a couple of blocks of print placed at random on the page and voilà…there's your poetry. In the literary department's opinion this type of work seems to have little in common with the definitely poetic – "Bateau Ivre," say – but that opinion is a minority one these days.
By modern standards, then "Howl," which takes up a third of Howl and Other Poems, is poetic. It doesn't rhyme and it doesn't scan, but it is written in a series of hanging indents, so it's poetry. But is it good poetry? That question has been much debated over the past forty-two years.
Certainly "Howl" is gripping. It seizes your attention at the very beginning and doesn't let go. It inspires you to read it aloud, an effect some people still consider to be a mark of good poetry. It inspires you to shout it aloud, and that may be a bit unrefined for most responsible contemporary citizens.
One of the characteristics preferred by modern consumers of poetry is obscurity. Obscurity allows the reader to bathe in a pleasant wonderment at the incomprehensibility of existence, which is apparently a pleasant experience for many. It is certainly a convenient preference for those whose goal is to maintain the populace in its apparently exemplary state of zombitude. "Howl", though, wants you to actually get up and do something, even if it's just to get excited. "Howl" is not obscure. It focusses your attention on actual real things and expects you to think about them.
Two other characteristics often considered these days to be defining characteristics of poetry are loveliness and fatuousness. Anything that deals too clearly with the facts of life is likely to upset the privileged types who make
up most of the modern poetry market. The poetry market in fact consists chiefly of social ballast – people with comfortable jobs and comfortable lives who don't actually do anything productive but who keep society stable by acting in accordance with one of the approved social myths. In poetry, as in fiction, in belles-lettres, and in non-fiction, this group prefers impressionist gewgaws, the elegantly puzzling, and the self-confidently stupid.
"Howl" is neither lovely nor obscure, and although it is often fatuous, there is still enough intelligent appreciation of the real in it to disqualify it on that score as well. How can you not like "I saw the best minds of my generation...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"? How can you not like "who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried"? How can you not like "[who] rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America's naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma sabachthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio"? How can you not like:
"I'm with you in Rockland/where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside
O starry-spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here
O victory forget your underwear we're free"?
How can you not consider this to be good poetry?
Well, some of the ideas in those excerpts are trite, but so are most of the ideas
in much highly regarded poetry. One problem with the excerpts, though, is that they are exuberant, as is the rest of "Howl." Exuberance is démodé
these days, considered appropriate only in adolescence or in appreciation of a sporting event. In other ages or circumstances we are not to indulge in anything which might impair our solemn concern about the important social issues helpfully defined for us by the Liberal and Conservative Parties of Canada and the International Monetary Fund.
"Howl" also makes too many references to phenomena typical only of the lives of the less favoured, and these days the appetite for literary slumming is much less keen than it was in 1956. Memories of the Depression are much rarer and fainter now, as is the realization that the misfortunes of the poor are not a sign of their moral inferiority to us, the more favoured.
"Howl" also fails to meet contemporary standards by refusing to lie quietly on the page without bothering us after we lay the book down. The images stay in our heads, distracting us from contemplation of the moral necessity of the elimination of barriers to international trade.
"Howl" is just too raucous. It offends the contemporary sensibility by being vital, vibrant, and exciting. It provides an unpleasant contrast with the pageant of steely-eyed sadism which passes for both entertainment and news these days. It suggests that there is an alternative to the modern "lifestyle" of hard work and regular deposits in one's retirement fund. "Howl" is actually fun, and if the masses ever re-acquire a taste for having fun with serious ideas, whatever will happen to us?
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