All language subtitles for Howl.2010.LIMITED.1080p.BluRay.X264-AMIABLE

"Howl" for Carl Solomon.

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,

angel-headed 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!

Sometimes I feel in command
when I'm writing.

When I'm in the heat
of some truthful tears, yes.

Other times...
most of the time, not.

You know, just diddling around...

woodcarving, you know,
finding a pretty shape,

like most of my poetry.

There's only been a few times
when I've reached a state of...

complete control...

Probably a piece of "Howl,"
and...

one or two moments
in other poems.

The beginning
of the fear for me was

what would my father think
of something that I would write.

At the time, writing "Howl,"

I assumed when writing it that

it was not something
that would be published,

because...

I wouldn't want my daddy
to see what was in there.

So, I assumed it wouldn't be
published, therefore, I could

write anything that I wanted to.

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,

angel-headed 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,

who passed through universities
with radiant cool eyes

hallucinating Arkansas and

Blake-light tragedy
among the scholars of war,

who were expelled
from the academies for crazy

& publishing obscene odes
on the windows of the skull,

who cowered in
unshaven rooms in underwear,

burning their money
in wastebaskets

and listening to the Terror
through the wall,

who got busted
in their pubic beards

returning through Laredo with a
belt of marijuana for New York,

who ate fire
in paint hotels or drank

turpentine in Paradise Alley,

death

or purgatoried their torsos
night after night with dreams,

with drugs,
with waking nightmares,

alcohol and cock
and endless balls,

What I wanted to read into
the record, Your Honor, is

not very much,
but it is pertinent to our case.

Why aren't you at the trial?

'Cause...

the trial's not about me.

As much as I have to thank them

completely for my fame...

It's the publisher,
Lawrence Ferlinghetti that was

busted for selling

obscene materials.

What I want to show is on
the first page inside of "Howl."

It says, "All these books
are published in Heaven."

And...

I don't quite understand that,
but anyway,

let the record show, Your Honor,

it's published by
the City Lights Pocketbook Shop.

Mr. Ferlinghetti could go
to jail if convicted?

I hope not.
That would be terrible.

May I have your name, please?

Gail Potter.

And have you done
any writing yourself?

Yes, I have done considerable.

I was on an NBC station for
10 years while I was teaching.

I was
community service director,

educational coordinator...

I have rewritten "Faust."

It took me three years
to do that, but I did it.

I rewrote "Everyman."

That isn't as funny
as you might think.

Pardon me, madam.

Ladies and gentlemen,

this is a trial
that involves serious issues.

Now kindly accord the witness

the courtesy you would want
to be accorded.

Alright.

And did you form an opinion as
to whether or not the book called

"Howl and Other Poems"
has any literary merit?

I think it has
no literary merit.

Go ahead.

In order to have literary style,
you must have

form, diction,
fluidity, clarity.

Now, I am speaking
only of style.

And in content,
every great piece of literature,

anything that can really be
classified as literature, is...

of some moral greatness,

and I think this fails
to the nth degree.

I see.

Can you think of
any other reasons?

Yes...

Use of language.

In regards to the figures
of speech he uses,

he fails in rhetoric,
of course,

for one thing, because
his figures of speech are

crude, and you feel like
you are going through the gutter

when you read that stuff.

I didn't linger on it long,
I assure you.

You may cross-examine.

Step down.

There's something more you want?

Step down.

Mr. Ehrlich doesn't want
to cross-examine.

You're through with me?

Step down.

What is "The Beat Generation"?

There is no Beat Generation.

It's just a bunch of guys,
trying to get published.

Why don't you tell me
how you started writing poetry?

I started writing poetry
because I was a dope,

and my father wrote poetry.

So I began writing
rhymes like him.

And then I went to Columbia
University and I fell in love

with Jack Kerouac.

Until I was 18, I was a virgin.

I was unable to reach out
to anybody's body.

To reach out to desire.

I just felt...

Chained.

Jack gave me permission
to open up.

He's a romantic poet.

And he taught me that
writing is personal,

that it comes from
the writer's own person.

His body,

his breathing rhythm,

his actual talk.

Eventually I developed a much
deeper sense of confession.

I needed to...

express my feelings to him,
but he didn't want to hear them.

So I had to find a new way
of expressing them...

a way that would entrance him.

This is good here.

"I was offered refreshments
which I accepted.

"I ate a sandwich of pure meat.

"Enormous sandwich of
human flesh, I noticed,

"while I was chewing on it.

"It also included
a dirty asshole!"

That's good!

That's good!
The meat and the asshole.

Allen, alright.

And then I realized
that if I actually

admitted and confessed
the secret tenderness

of my soul in my writing,

he would understand nakedly
who I was. And so...

that sincere talk
replaced the earlier

imitative rhyming
that I was doing for my father.

Jack was the first person
I really opened up to and said,

"I'm a homosexual."

I very soon realized that nobody
was really shocked by anything.

Unless you're out
murdering people, you know,

People would never
really be shocked by

an expression of feeling.

Really I wrote "Howl" for Jack.

Who chained themselves to
subways for the endless ride

from Battery to holy Bronx
on benzedrine

until the noise of wheels
and children brought them down

shuddering mouth-wracked
and battered bleak of brain

all drained of brilliance
in the drear light of Zoo,

Who talked continuously 70 hours

from park to pad
to bar to Bellevue

to museum
to the Brooklyn Bridge,

A lost battalion of
platonic conversationalists

jumping down the stoops,

off fire escapes,
off windowsills,

off Empire State,

out of the moon,

yacketayakking
screaming vomiting

whispering facts and memories
and anecdotes and

eyeball kicks and shocks
of hospitals and jails and wars

who lit cigarettes
in boxcars boxcars boxcars

racketing through snow toward
lonesome farms in grand-father night

who studied Plotinus
Poe St. John of the Cross,

telepathy and bop kabbalah

because the cosmos instinctively
vibrated at their feet in Kansas,

who loned it
through the streets of Idaho

seeking visionary Indian angels

who were
visionary Indian angels,

who jumped in limousines
with the Chinaman of Oklahoma

on the impulse of winter midnight
streetlight small-town rain,

who reappeared on the West Coast

investigating the FBI
in beards and shorts

with big pacifist eyes

sexy in their dark skin

passing out
incomprehensible leaflets,

who burned cigarette holes
in their arms

protesting the narcotic
tobacco haze of Capitalism,

who distributed Super-Communist
pamphlets in Union Square

weeping and undressing
while the sirens of Los Alamos

wailed them down
and wailed down Wall,

and the Staten Island Ferry
also wailed,

who let themselves be fucked in
the ass by saintly motorcyclists

and screamed with joy,

who blew and were blown by those
human seraphim, the sailors,

caresses of Atlantic
and Caribbean love.

The problem, when it
comes to literature, is this:

There are many writers
who have preconceived ideas

about what literature
is supposed to be,

but their ideas seem to preclude

everything that makes them
most interesting

in casual conversation.

Their faggishness,

their solitude,

their neuroses,

their goofiness,

their campiness,

or, even
their masculinity at times.

Because they think that
they're gonna write something

that sounds like something else
that they've read before,

instead of

sounds like them.

Or, comes from their own life.

We all talk amongst ourselves;

we have a common understanding,

we say anything we want to say.
We talk about our assholes,

we talk about our cocks,

we talk about
who we fucked last night,

or who we're gonna
fuck tomorrow,

or what kind of
love affair we're in, or

when we got drunk and had a broom
stick shoved up our ass in the

Hotel Ambassador in Prague...

I mean, everyone tells
one's friends about that! Right?

So...

the question is, what happens
when you make a distinction

between what you tell your friends
and what you tell your Muse?

The trick is to break down
that distinction,

to approach your Muse as

frankly as you would talk
to yourself or to your friends.

It's the ability
to commit to writing - to write -

the same way that

you are.

Who balled in the morning
in the evenings

in rose gardens and the grass
of public parks and cemeteries

scattering their semen freely
to whomever come who may,

Who hiccuped endlessly
trying to giggle

but wound up with a sob behind
a partition in a Turkish bath

with a blonde and naked angel
came to pierce them with a sword,

The act of writing becomes,
like, a meditation exercise.

If you walk down the street
in New York for a few blocks,

you'll get this
gargantuan feeling of buildings.

And, if you walk all day,
you'll be on the verge of tears.

But, you have to walk all day
before you get that sensation.

What I mean is, if you write
all day, you'll get into it.

Into your body, into your feelings,
into your consciousness...

I don't write enough
in that way.

Who lost their loveboys to
the three old shrews of fate

the one eyed shrew
of the heterosexual dollar

the one eyed shrew
that winks out of the womb

and the one eyed shrew that
does nothing but sit on her ass

and snip the intellectual golden
threads of the craftsman's loom

who copulated ecstatic and
insatiate with a bottle of beer,

a sweetheart,
a package of cigarettes,

a candle and fell off the bed

and continued along the floor
and down the hall

and ended fainting on the wall

with a vision of
ultimate cunt and come

eluding the last gyzym
of consciousness,

who faded out
in vast sordid movies,

were shifted in dreams,

woke on a sudden Manhattan,
and picked themselves up

out of basements
hungover with heartless Tokay

and horrors of
Third Avenue iron dreams

and stumbled to
unemployment offices,

who created
great suicidal dramas

on the apartment cliff-banks
of the Hudson

under the wartime blue
floodlight of the moon

and their heads shall be crowned
with laurel in oblivion,

who wept at the romance
of the streets

with their pushcarts
full of onions and bad music,

who sat in boxes breathing
in the darkness under the bridge,

and rose up to build
harpsichords in their lofts,

who scribbled all night rocking
and rolling over lofty incantations

which in the yellow morning
were stanzas of gibberish,

who were burned alive
in their innocent flannel suits

on Madison Avenue

amid blasts of leaden verse

and the tanked-up clatter
of the iron regiments of fashion

and the nitroglycerine shrieks
of the fairies of advertising

and the mustard gas
of sinister intelligent editors,

or were run down by the drunken
taxicabs of Absolute Reality.

Would you say that
"Howl" has any literary merit?

Yes.

And I presume you understand
the whole thing, is that right?

I hope so.

It's not always easy
to know that one

understands exactly what
a contemporary poet is saying,

but I think I do.

Well, let's go
into some of this.

"With dreams, with drugs,
with waking nightmares,

"alcohol and cock
and endless balls."

What significance
does that have to you?

Well...

there are uprooted people
wandering around the United States,

dreaming,

drugged...

That's clear isn't it?

Even their waking hours
like nightmares,

loaded with liquor and...

enjoying, I take it,

a variety of indiscriminate
sexual experience.

You understand what
"angelheaded hipsters

"burning for the ancient
heavenly connection

"to the starry dynamo in the
machinery of night" means?

Sir, you can't translate
poetry into prose.

That's why it is poetry.

But what are
"angelheaded hipsters"?

I was working as a copyboy
at Associated Press,

and I was able to manage things.

Except that I was living in a
$13-a-month, cold-water apartment

filled with junkies and thieves.

So the place was being filled
with stolen silverware and

beautiful oaken furniture

taken from the lobbies
of apartment buildings.

At a certain point,

I figured that things were
getting too hot, and that...

I'd better get out of there.
You know, get out from under.

So...

I piled myself
and all my manuscripts

into the back of some guy's car

that turned out to be stolen.

You know, he had in the back,

all these stolen suits
and suitcases and silverware,

and he turned the wrong way
up a one-way street,

at the end of which
there was a police car.

So he swerves his car
to take a side road out,

and skidded and smashed
and papers flying...

my eyeglasses lost,
all the clothes upside down.

I jumped out, looked around, and

went back in the car
to find my notebooks, but

I couldn't find my eyeglasses,
so I couldn't find my papers.

The crowd was gathering around.

Chaos.

The easiest way
to get out of the whole thing,

as it turns out, was

to just go to the Psychiatric
Institute on 168th Street.

I was in the looney bin
for eight months.

I met Carl Solomon there.

He was thinking
about the void, also

and such problems, and...

We spent months sitting around
asking ourselves whether the

authority of the doctors

and their sense of reality
was right for us

or whether we were right,
or you know what was happening.

And Carl was having problems

because he was receiving
shock treatment.

I didn't have any of that,
no medication, no shock.

'Cause I'd promised the doctor
that I would be heterosexual.

And that's how I got out.

Your mother was
institutionalized, wasn't she?

The concrete void
of insulin Metrazol

electricity hydrotherapy
psychotherapy

occupational therapy
pingpong and amnesia,

who in humorless protest,

overturned only one
symbolic pingpong table,

resting briefly in catatonia,

returning years later truly bald
except for a wig of blood,

and tears and fingers,

to the visible madman doom
of the wards

of the madtowns of the East,

Pilgrim State's Rockland's
and Greystone's foetid halls...

My mother Naomi was...

in and out of
mental institutions

from the time I was 6.

When I was 21, I had to sign
the papers for her lobotomy.

She died
at Pilgrim State Hospital.

...bickering with
the echoes of the soul,

rocking and rolling
in the midnight

solitude-bench
dolmen-realms of love,

dream of life a nightmare,

bodies turned to stone
as heavy as the moon,

with mother

finally fucked,

and the last fantastic book

flung out of the
tenement window,

and the last door closed at 4 am

and the last telephone
slammed at the wall in reply

and the last furnished room
emptied down to the last piece

of mental furniture,

a yellow paper rose twisted
on a wire hanger in the closet,

and even that imaginary,

nothing but a hopeful little bit
of hallucination

Ah, Carl,

while you are not safe

I am not safe,

and now you're really in
the total animal soup of time...

After I got out of
the mental hospital,

I had a period of fear where...

I felt I had to
get out of New York.

I was questioning
my sense of reality versus the

social sense
that was being imposed on me.

It was a position that...

Many people in the hospital
came out with, you know,

a total self-rejection,

a rejection of, you know,
their own universe.

Lip service, actually, to...

supposedly acceptable
social patterns.

But I was falling in love
over and over again,

and I kept writing
my poetry about

the people
I was falling in love with.

All straight men.

And I hitch-hiked cross-country

from Denver
with my friend, Neal Cassady.

And Neal was very frenetic,

very charming,

and he had six thousand

girls across the continent
that were keeping him very busy.

Ok... um... no. Um...

Kiss!

Wait, wait, you have something...

I'll get that.

- Better?
- Yeah.

- Get it?
- I got it.

One day, Neal and I were
thrown together in bed, at 4 am

By circumstance...

with no place else to go
and no place else to sleep.

And I remember
being a little scared,

and not quite sure
what to do, so...

I sort of like turned over and

stiffened my body
and got on the edge of the bed.

And he saw that I was shy.

At the time I was still...

scared of feeling
with another person.

So he put his arm around me,

and pulled me, and

put my head on his breast, and

gave me love, actually.

And then one day,
I got a letter

saying, finally,

"We shouldn't consider
ourselves lovers...

"I'm distracted with the wife,

"as much as I love you."

So my heart was broken.

"Dear Allen,

"What you say is honestly
what I've been doing

"or striving for all my life.

"Therein lies our,

"or my confused sense
of closeness.

"Also I fear therein lies our
strength of tie to each other.

"I say, 'I fear,'

"for I really don't know how much
I can be satisfied to love you.

"I mean 'bodily.'

"You know, I sometimes dislike
pricks and men and before you

"had consciously forced myself
to be homosexual.

"You meant so much to me.

"I now feel I was forcing
a desire for you bodily

"as a compensation to you

"for all you were giving me.

"Allen, this is straight.

"What I truly want is to live
with you from September to June,

"have an apartment,
a girl, go to college,

"see all and do all,

"and become truly straight,
so please, Allen,

"give this
a good deal of thought."

Who drove cross-country 72 hours
to find out if I had a vision

or you had a vision

or he had a vision
to find out Eternity,

who journeyed to Denver,

who died in Denver,

who came back to Denver
and waited in vain,

who watched over Denver
and brooded and loned in Denver

and finally went away
to find out the Time,

and now Denver
is lonesome for her heroes,

who fell on their knees
in hopeless cathedrals

praying for each other's
salvation and light and breasts,

until the soul illuminated
its hair for a second,

who sweetened the snatches
of a million girls

trembling in the sunset,

and were red eyed in the morning
but prepared

to sweeten
the snatch of the sunrise,

flashing buttocks under barns
and naked in the lake,

who went out whoring through Colorado
in myriad stolen night-cars,

Neal Cassady,
secret hero of these poems,

cocksman and Adonis of Denver,

joy to the memory
of his innumerable lays of girls

in empty lots
and diner backyards,

Moviehouses' rickety rows,
on mountaintops in caves

or with gaunt waitresses
in familiar roadside

lonely petticoat upliftings.

I think it's a howl of pain.

Figuratively speaking,
his toes have been stepped on.

He's poetically putting
his cry of pain and

protest into this book, "Howl."

And do you think this book
has definite literary value?

I do.

As a matter of fact,
I think in a way

he is employing
the jazz phraseology here

and, may I say, I...

I think he's also employing
the words he heard

in his life on the road
and in his various experiences.

Thank you.

Now, do you understand
most of the words in this book?

I think
I understand their significance

and the general context of it.

I see.

Taking on page 13,

the 14th line:

"Who howled on their knees
in the subway

"and were dragged off the roof
waving genitals and manuscripts."

Now, do you understand what
that paragraph is trying to say,

as a part of the "Howl"?

Not explicitly.

I would say
he was attempting to show the...

lack of inhibition
in the persons he's talking of,

post-World War II generation...

those who returned,

went into college or went into
work immediately after WW II

perhaps were somewhat displaced
by the chaos of the war and

didn't immediately settle down.

Now, the next paragraph:

"Who blew and were blown

"by those human seraphim,
the sailors,

"caresses of Atlantic
and Caribbean love."

Now, you understand what
"blew" and "blown" mean?

Well, I think they are words
that have several meanings.

What meanings do you attribute
to the words in this paragraph?

It can at one level mean...
that they were vagabonds,

that they were being blown about
by natural, literal winds.

On the other hand, perhaps it
does have a sexual connotation.

In reference
to oral copulation, right?

Yes, possibly.

Now then, do you find
that those words

are necessary to the context

to make it a work
of literary value?

I thought we had settled this,
Your Honor.

Yes, Mr. Mclntosh,
if you will recall,

I said that I would not allow
the use of the word "necessary."

But you may ask the question,
"Are they relevant?"

Are they relevant to make
this a work of literary value?

Yes, I would say so.

Now then if you took
those words out of there,

Would that spoil the portrayal?

That's doing indirectly what Your Honor
won't permit him to do directly.

This man is an expert.

He has to speculate.

No, Mr. Mclntosh, I'm afraid
I can't go along with you on that.

Whether the author might
have used other or different words,

you're getting into
the realm of speculation there.

Objection sustained.

Going down a little further...

"who sweetened the snatches
of a million girls

"trembling in the sunset,
and were red eyed in the morning

"but prepared to sweeten
the snatch of the sunrise,

"flashing buttocks under barns
and naked in the lake."

What's your question?

Is that word "snatches"
in there...

Is that...

relevant to Mr. Ginsberg's
literary endeavor?

Yes. I think to use euphemisms
in describing this would...

seem dishonest to Mr. Ginsberg.

You also said, I believe,
literary value sometimes

is a book which will survive
any test of time.

Do you think Mr. Ginsberg's work
will survive the test of time?

He has no way of knowing,

no more than some people thought
"Leaves of Grass" would survive.

I'm asking him for his opinion,
to give us an opinion on that book.

He says that literary value

depends on surviving
the test of time.

I want to know if it will.

If Luther Nichols
could answer that,

then the Good Lord could use a
helper and he ought to be up there.

How can he tell?

I'm asking
for his opinion as an expert.

I'll ask him.

Can you answer the question?

It calls for a prediction.

I think that this trial
will draw attention to it.

"Howl" will have a wider readership
than it might otherwise have had,

and may go down in history as
a stepping-stone along the way

to greater or lesser liberality

in the permitting
of poems of its type.

Poetry, generally, is a...

rythmic articulation of feeling

And the feeling is

an impulse that begins inside.

Like a sexual impulse, you know.
Almost as definite as that. It's

It's a feeling that begins, in
the pit of the stomach, right?

And rises up
through the breast, and...

out the mouth and ears, right?

And...

it comes forth as a croon
or a groan or a sigh, right?

So if you try
to put words to that

by looking around you and

trying to describe
what's making you sigh,

just sigh in words,

you simply articulate
what you're feeling.

Who bit detectives in the neck
and shrieked with delight

in police cars
for committing no crime,

but their own wild cooking
pederasty and intoxication.

Who howled
on their knees in the subway

and were dragged off the roof

waving genitals and manuscripts.

In the moment of composition,

I don't necessarily
know what it means.

It comes to mean
something later,

after a year or two,
I come to realize

it meant something clear,

unconsciously.

Which takes on meaning in time,
you know like...

a photograph developing slowly.

If it's at all spontaneous,

I don't know whether it even
makes sense sometimes.

And other times, I do know
it makes complete sense,

I start crying.

'Cause I realize that I'm...

I'm hitting on an area that's...

absolutely true.

In that sense, able to be
read by someone

and wept to,
maybe, centuries later.

In that sense, prophecy,

because it touches a common key.

I mean,

what prophecy actually is,

is not knowing whether...

the bomb will fall in 1942.

It's knowing
and feeling something

which someone knows and feels

in a hundred years. Hmm?

And maybe articulating it
in a hint that

they will pick up on
in a 100 years.

Who crashed through
their minds in jail

waiting for impossible criminals

with golden heads

and the charm
of reality in their hearts

who sang sweet blues
to Alcatraz,

who demanded sanity trials
accusing the radio of hypnotism

and were left
with their insanity

and their hands and a hung jury

who threw potato salad
at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism

and subsequently
presented themselves

on the granite steps
of the madhouse

with shaven heads
and harlequin speech of suicide,

demanding
instantaneous lobotomy,

and who were given instead

the concrete void
of insulin Metrazol

electricity hydrotherapy
psychotherapy

occupational therapy
pingpong and amnesia,

and who therefore
ran through the icy streets

obsessed with a sudden flash

of the alchemy
of the use of the ellipse

the catalog the meter
and the vibrating plane,

who dreamt and made
incarnate gaps in Time and Space

through images juxtaposed,

and trapped the archangel
of the soul

between 2 visual images

to recreate the syntax
and measure of poor human prose

and stand before you
speechless and intelligent

and shaking with shame,

rejected yet confessing
out the soul

to conform to the rhythm of thought

in his naked and endless head,

the madman bum
and angel beat in Time,

unknown, yet putting down here

what might be left to say
in time come after death,

and 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 lamma

sabacthani saxophone cry

That shivered the cities
down to the last radio

with the absolute heart
of the poem of life

butchered out
of their own bodies

good to eat a thousand years.

After I left New York,

I spent a year in San Francisco.

I had an apartment on Nob Hill,

the tie and suit,

a job with several
secretaries which was...

beginning to give me pleasure,

the pleasure
of knowing I could do it

and was no longer intimidated
by the social forms,

to be able to make it
in the very dry, business world

And that's when I met Peter.

It was when I met Peter

that everything changed for me.

It was as if the heavens
showered with gold.

Finally somebody loved me
like I loved them,

and for the first time,
I felt accepted in my life.

Completely.

In San Francisco,

I had a year of psychotherapy
with Dr. Hicks.

I was blocked,
I couldn't write...

I was still trying
to act normal.

I was afraid I was crazy.

I was sure that I was
supposed to be heterosexual

and that something
was wrong with me.

And Dr. Hicks kept saying,

"What do you want to do?

"What is your heart's desire?"

Finally I said...

what I'd really like to do is to

just quit all this

and...

get a small room with Peter

and devote myself
to my writing and

contemplation and fucking
and smoking pot and...

doing whatever I want.

And he said,
"Why don't you do it, then?"

I mean, what will happen
if I grow old...

and I have pee-stains
in my underwear

and I'm living
in some furnished room

and nobody loves me and I'm...

white-haired and...

I have no money, bread crumbs
are falling on the floor?"

And he said,

"Don't worry about that,

"you're very charming and lovable
and people will always love you."

What a relief to hear that!

I very soon realized that
it was all...

a fear-trap...

Illusory!

What sphinx
of cement and aluminum

bashed open their skulls

and ate up
their brains and imagination?

Moloch! Solitude! Filth!

Ugliness! Ashcans and
unobtainable dollars!

Children screaming
under stairways!

Boys sobbing in armies!

Old men weeping in the parks!

Moloch! Moloch!

Nightmare of Moloch!
Moloch the loveless!

Mental Moloch!

Moloch the heavy judger of men!

Peter and I saw Moloch one day
when we took peyote

and were wandering around
downtown streets.

It's a god that you make
fire sacrifices to.

But...

in my mind, it was what
drove my mother to madness.

So, I had the line

Moloch whose eyes are
a thousand blind windows.

I had this word,

And... I also had the feeling

DA de de DA de de DA
de de DA DA. Hmm?

So then all I had to do was look
up and see a lot of windows,

and say,
"Oh, windows, of course,"

But what kind of windows? Right?
And...

Not only that...

"Moloch whose eyes"...Right?

"Moloch whose eyes" which
is beautiful in itself but...

You know, what about it?

"Moloch whose eyes" what?

"Moloch whose eyes"...

Then the next thing
I thought was probably...

"Thousands."

OK, but "thousands" what?

"Thousands blind"...

And then I had to
finish it somehow. So...

I had to say "windows."

Moloch whose eyes are
a thousand blind windows!

Moloch whose skyscrapers

stand in the long streets
like endless Jehovahs!

Moloch whose factories
dream and croak in the fog!

Moloch whose love
is endless oil and stone!

Moloch whose soul
is electricity and banks!

Moloch whose fate is a cloud
of sexless hydrogen!

Moloch in whom I sit lonely!

Moloch in whom I dream Angels!

Crazy in Moloch!

Cocksucker in Moloch!

Lacklove and manless in Moloch!

Moloch who entered
my soul early!

Moloch who frightened me
out of my natural ecstasy!

Moloch whom I abandon!

Wake up in Moloch!

Light streaming out of the sky!

Moloch! Moloch!

Robot apartments!

Invisible suburbs!

Skeleton treasuries!

Blind capitals!

Demonic industries!

Spectral nations!

Invincible mad houses!

Granite cocks!

Monstrous bombs!

They broke their backs
lifting Moloch to Heaven!

Pavements, trees!

Lifting the city to Heaven

which exists
and is everywhere about us!

Dreams!

Adorations!

Illuminations!

Religions!

The whole boatload
of sensitive bullshit!

Breakthroughs!

Over the river!

Flips and crucifixions!

Gone down the flood!

Highs! Epiphanies!

Despairs!

Ten years' animal screams
and suicides!

Minds! New loves!
Mad generation!

Down on the rocks of Time!

Real holy laughter in the river!

They saw it all!

The wild eyes! The holy yells!

They bade farewell!

They jumped off the roof!
To solitude!

Waving!

Carrying flowers!

Down to the river!

Into the street!

It is my opinion that if it has
any literary value,

it's negligible.

I endeavored to arrive
at my opinion

on an objective basis.

For example,

a great literary work, or even
a fairly great literary work,

would obviously be
exceedingly successful in form,

but this poem is really
just a weak imitation

of a form that was used 80
to 90 years ago by Walt Whitman.

And do you recall
the name of that poem?

"Leaves of Grass" was
the name of the poem.

Literary value
could also reside in theme,

and what little literary value
there is in "Howl,"

it seems to me
does come in theme.

The statement of the idea of
the poem was relatively clear,

but it has little validity,
and, therefore, the theme

has a negative value.

No value at all.

Thank you.

Did I understand you to say that

Ginsberg used
Walt Whitman's style?

The form.

The form of the book
"Leaves of Grass."

And because of
Ginsberg's using this format,

it is your opinion
that the poem "Howl"

has no literary value or...

merit, is that true?

On the basis of form,
that's correct,

because great literature
always creates

its own form for
each significant occasion.

By that, you do not mean that

Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass"
doesn't quite qualify?

That is great literature.

The form was created
by Walt Whitman.

And at the same time,
you say, because

Ginsberg copied that format,

"Howl" has no
value or merit, am I correct?

That is correct.

An imitation never does
have the value of the original.

Who did Walt Whitman copy?

To my knowledge, no one.

But you don't know,

isn't that your answer,
you don't know, sir?

That's right.

As I understand,
your next signpost

is that the idea

of "Howl" is clear,
but has little validity.

Am I quoting you correctly?

That's the general conclusion,
yes...

the idea of "Howl"
is clear in theme.

- The idea is clear?
- Yes.

What idea
does Ginsberg have in "Howl"?

Well, he celebrates
the unfortunate life of...

I can't remember the man's name,
Solomon...

the unfortunate life
of the man, Solomon,

who is a drifter
of Dadaist persuasion.

A drift what?

Drifter of Dadaist persuasion.

He portrays that?

That's correct.

And does that portrayal
have any validity?

Not as literature, no.

Carl Solomon!

I'm with you in Rockland
where you're madder than I am.

I'm with you in Rockland where
you must feel very strange.

I'm with you in Rockland where you
imitate the shade of my mother.

I'm with you in Rockland where
you pun on the bodies of your nurses,

the harpies of the Bronx.

I'm with you in Rockland

where you bang on
the catatonic piano

the soul is
innocent and immortal

it should never die ungodly
in an armed madhouse.

I'm with you in Rockland

where fifty more shocks
will never return

your soul to its body again

from its pilgrimage
to a cross in the void.

I'm with you in Rockland

where you accuse
your doctors of insanity

and plot
the Hebrew socialist revolution

against
the fascist national Golgotha

I'm with you in Rockland

where you will split
the heavens of Long Island

and resurrect
your living human Jesus

from the superhuman tomb

I'm with you in Rockland
where there are 25,000

mad comrades
all together singing

the final stanzas
of the Internationale.

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

I'm with you in Rockland

in my dreams

you walk dripping
from a sea-journey

on the highway across America

in tears to the door
of my cottage

in the Western night.

What is your impression
of the third portion of "Howl"?

My understanding there would be
that the poet expresses

the usual Dadaist line that

everything is created
for man's despair,

that everything must be
forgotten and destroyed, and

that Solomon's life apparently
has had this kind of rhythm.

Therefore,
there is some validity

of theme, in that area.

So, there is
validity of theme there?

I am afraid I got my tongue
tripped up there... this...

I should have said "clarity"
instead of "validity."

But you've been using
the term "validity"

the entire time
you've been on the stand.

By the way, Mr. Kirk,
have you read the Holy Bible?

I have.

Tell me, did you read Job?

I have.

Isn't Job crying the same cry
as Ginsberg's "Howl"?

Not at all.

Do you agree with me
that Job does condemn life?

Job condemns
man's condition, yes,

but he does not go on then,
as the Dadaist goes on, to...

desire to wipe out
all human memory

of everything the human race
has ever done

so that there can be
a fresh start made

as the Dadaist does.

And you don't believe
in that philosophy?

Not at all.

No, it's been dead
since about 1922 or '23.

But that doesn't
necessarily mean that

someone who does
believe that is...

wrong, does it?

No, but that does not
create literature.

Well, what...

What creates
literature, Mr. Kirk?

I'd have to return to my three
bases of objective criticism:

Form, theme and opportunity.

Well...

Do you feel that
Ginsberg had the

opportunity in his travels

to observe life
and to write about it?

A small segment, yes.

And this is the segment that
he's writing about,

isn't that right?

One thing...

Answer that question,
please, "Yes" or "No."

Uh... I'm... I'm confused.

This is the segment that
he is writing about,

isn't that true?

I can't answer that
either "Yes" or "No."

But you said in his travels,

he wrote about a small segment
of the community.

Here's where
the confusion comes in:

I believe the travels
are Solomon's, not Ginsberg's.

That's the basis
of my confusion.

Yes, well, Ginsberg is writing
it about Solomon...

It's his own observations.

You have read that, haven't you?

I am unable to know
whether he has

an acquaintance with Solomon.

That is the thing that is
beyond my experience,

beyond my knowledge.

Do you evaluate a work
by whether the writer knew

the person he was talking about?

Absolutely.

Are you certain that
Carl Solomon ever lived?

No.

Then you don't know, do you?

Not at all.

Have you ever read... Voltaire?

I've read one work,

"Candide."

And what is your opinion
of "Candide"?

As literature?
It's great literature.

And whose style
did Voltaire copy?

Oh!

Your Honor!

Please!

Counsel is allowed
to make an objection.

If he objects.

Well, I would like to...

I don't want to box with him.

He's disturbing me.

I get my mouth open
and out fly fists.

How long have you
reflected on "Howl"?

I believe two weeks.

Two weeks?

Two weeks would be
the limit of my opportunity.

However, I made my mind up
after 5 minutes.

And you reflected
a long, long time

on Voltaire's "Candide,"
is that right?

Exactly.

Well, do you think that
if you had another

ten years to reflect on "Howl,"

you might change your opinion?

I am quite certain I would not.

That is all.

...where you accuse
your doctors of insanity

and plot the Hebrew
socialist revolution

against the fascist
national Golgotha.

I'm with you in Rockland

where you will split
the heavens of Long Island

and resurrect your living human
Jesus from the superhuman tomb

I'm with you in Rockland

where there are
25,000 mad comrades all together

singing the final stanzas
of the Internationale

I'm with you in Rockland

where we hug and kiss

the United States
under our bedsheets.

The United States

that coughs all night
and won't let us sleep.

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!

I'm with you in Rockland

in my dreams

you walk dripping
from a sea-journey

on the highway across America

in tears to the door
of my cottage

in the Western night.

"Howl" contains words,

taken just by themselves,
Your Honor,

that are definitely obscene.

And we have had different
literary experts testify that

the books have literary merit,
and that the words

are necessary to that
so-called merit.

But it's funny in our law,

we are allowed to use

expert witnesses
to testify as to literary merit,

but we are not allowed
to bring in,

we will say, the average man

to testify that when
he reads the book,

he doesn't understand it.

He doesn't know
what it's all about.

Perhaps it's over his head.

Take, for example...

Frankly, and I made the comment
in open court that I'd read it,

I don't understand it very well.

In fact, looking it all over,

I think it's a lot of
sensitive bullshit,

using the language
of Mr. Ginsberg.

So then,

If the sale of a book
is not being limited to just

modern book reviewers

and experts on modern poetry,

but falls into the hands
of the general public,

that is to say,
the average reader,

this court should take that
into consideration

in determining whether or not
"Howl" is obscene.

Thank you, Your Honor

Alright...

I will hear from the defense.

The United States Supreme Court
has said that obscenity

is construed to mean

"having a
substantial tendency to corrupt

"by arousing lustful desires."

Is the word relevant to what
the author is trying to say,

or did he just use it
to be dirty and filthy?

He sees what he terms as

"an Adonis of Denver,
joy to the memory

"of his innumerable conquests.

Who went out
whoring through Colorado

in myriad stolen night-cars

Neal Cassady,
secret hero of this poem,

cocksman and Adonis of Denver,

joy to the memory
of his innumerable lays of girls

in empty lots
and diner backyards,

moviehouses' rickety rows,

on mountaintops in caves
or with gaunt waitresses

in familiar roadside
lonely petticoat upliftings

and especially secret
gas-station solipsisms of johns,

and hometown alleys too.

Now, I suppose
he could have said that,

the secret hero of these poems,

this "cocksman,"
this "Adonis of Denver,"

joy to memory
of his innumerable conquests

at the Waldorf Astoria...

or at dinner at Chasen's,
or after one or two drinks,

in going to bed
at the Stork Club.

I presume
he could have said that...

but that isn't
the kind of person

he is writing about.

It is not for us
to choose the words.

Mr. Ginsberg,
in telling his story,

is telling the story
as he sees it.

He is using his words.

There are books that
have the power to change

men's minds,

and call attention
to situations that...

are visible but

unseen.

Now whether "Howl" is
or is not "obscene" is of

little importance to our world,
faced as it is with the threat

of physical survival,

but...

the problem of what is
legally permissible

in the description of
sexual acts or feelings

in arts and literature
is of the greatest importance

to a free society.

What is "prurient"?

And to whom?

And the material so described
is dangerous to some

unspecified, susceptible reader.

It is interesting that

the person applying
such standards of censorship

rarely feels as if their own

physical or moral health
is in jeopardy.

The desire to censor is...

not limited, however,
to crackpots and bigots.

There is...

in most of us, a desire to

make the world conform
to our own views.

And it takes all of the force
of our own reason as well as

our legal institutions
to defy so human an urge.

The battle of censorship
will not be

finally settled by
Your Honor's decision,

but you will either add
to liberal, educated thinking,

or by your decision,
you will add fuel

to the fire of ignorance.

Let there be light.

Let there be honesty.

Let there be no running from

non-existent
destroyers of morals.

Let there be
honest understanding.

Gentleman,
is the matter submitted?

It is submitted, Your Honor.

It is so submitted.

All rise.

Be seated.

There are a number of words
used in "Howl"

that are presently considered
coarse and vulgar

in some circles
of the community,

and in other circles,
such words are in everyday use.

The author of "Howl"

has used those words
because he believed that

his portrayal required them
as being in character.

The People state that such words
are not necessary

and that others would be
more palatable for good taste.

The answer is that life is not
encased in one formula

whereby everyone acts the same

and conforms
to a particular pattern.

No two persons think alike.

We were all made
from the same form

but in different patterns.

Would there be any freedoms
of press or speech

if one must reduce
his vocabulary

to vapid, innocuous euphemism?

An author should be real
in treating his subject

and be allowed to express
his thoughts

and ideas in his own words.

In considering material
claimed to be obscene,

it is well
to remember the motto,

"Honi soit qui mal y pense'

"Evil to him who evil thinks."

The freedoms of speech and press

are inherent
in a nation of free people.

These freedoms must be protected
if we are to remain free,

both individually
and as a nation.

Therefore, I conclude that
the book "Howl and Other Poems"

does have some redeeming
social importance,

and I find the book
is not obscene.

The defendant
is found not guilty.

The crucial moment
of breakthrough came when

I realized
how funny it would be,

in the middle of a long poem,

if I said:

"Who let themselves
be fucked in the ass

"and screamed with joy!"

Instead of
"and screamed with pain."

That's the contradiction
in that line.

An American audience would
expect it to be pain and,

instead,
it's "screamed with joy!"

Which is really true.

Absolutely, 100%.

And, again, I have a line, like

"Who blew and were blown
by those human seraphim,

the sailors, caresses of

"Atlantic and Caribbean love."

It was
an acknowledgement of the

basic reality of homosexual joy.

That was a breakthrough
in the sense of

public statements about

feelings, emotions,
attitudes, you know,

that...

I wouldn't have wanted
my father or my family to see,

and that I even
hesitated to make public.

The poem is misinterpreted as...

a promotion of homosexuality.

Actually, it's...
more like a promotion of

frankness, about any subject.

If you're a foot fetishist,
you write about feet.

If you're a stock-market freak,

you can write about
the rising sales-curve erections

of the Standard Oil chart.

When a few people are...

frank about
homosexuality in public,

it breaks the ice.

Then people are free
to be frank about anything and...

That's socially useful.

Homosexuality is a condition,

and because it alienated me

or set me apart
from the beginning,

it served as a catalyst
for self-examination,

or...

a detailed realization
of my environment and...

the reasons why
everyone else is different and

why I am different.

Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!

The world is holy!

The soul is holy!

The skin is holy!

The nose is holy!

The tongue and cock
and hand and asshole, holy!

Everything is holy!

Everybody's holy!

Everywhere is holy!

Everyday is an eternity!

Everyman's an angel!

The bum's as holy
as the seraphim!

The madman is holy
as you my soul are holy!

The typewriter is holy!

The poem is holy!

The voice is holy!

The hearers are holy!

The ecstasy is holy!

Holy Peter!

Holy Allen!

Holy Solomon!

Holy Lucien!

Holy Kerouac!

Holy Huncke
holy Burroughs holy Cassady!

Holy the unknown buggered
and suffering beggars!

Holy the hideous human angels!

Holy my mother
in the insane asylum!

Holy the cocks
of the grandfathers of Kansas!

Holy the groaning saxophone!

Holy the bop apocalypse!

Holy the jazzbands
marijuana hipsters

peace and junk and drums!

Holy time in eternity!

Holy eternity in time!

Holy the clocks in space!

Holy the fourth dimension!

Holy the Fifth Internationale!

Holy the Angel in Moloch!

Holy the sea!

Holy the desert!

Holy the railroad,
holy the locomotive

Holy the visions!

Holy the hallucinations!

Holy the miracles!

Holy the eyeball!

Holy the abyss!

Holy forgiveness!

Mercy!

Charity!

Faith!

Holy!

Ours!

Bodies!

Suffering!

Magnanimity!

Holy the supernatural extra
brilliant intelligent kindness

of the soul.

Hey Father Death,
I'm flying home

Hey, poor man,
you're all alone

Hey, old daddy,
I know where I'm going.

Father Death,
don't cry any more.

Mama's there,
underneath the floor.

Brother Death,
please mind the store.

Old Auntie Death,
I hear your groans.

Old Uncle Death,
I see your bones.

Oh Sister Death,
how sweet your moan

Oh Children Death,
go breathe your breaths.

Sobbing breasts'll ease
your deaths.

Pain is gone,
tears take the rest.

Genius Death,
your art is done

Lover Death,
your body's gone

Father Death,
I'm coming home

Guru Death,
your words are true

Teacher Death,
I do thank you

For inspiring me
to sing this Blues

Buddha Death,
I wake with you

Dharma Death,
your mind is new

Sangha Death,
we'll work it through

Suffering is what was born

Ignorance made me forlorn

Tearful truths I cannot scorn

Father Breath,
once more farewell

Birth you gave
was no thing ill

My heart is still,

as time will tell.

Subtitling: LVT-New York