Allen Ginsberg’s electric “Footnote” to Howl situates itself comfortably within his bigger poem, or just plain Howl, a well-known and admired epic by Allen Ginsberg for his generation of lost and disaffected youths. Ginsberg’s epic entirety closely resembles Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass published in 1855, which marked an era of upheaval in politics, society, and social conventions. Now getting to Ginsberg’s infamous “Footnote,” which stirred up and presented a new literary style approaching contemporary literature; footnotes first of all are a reader’s guide as to who the narrator’s sources are for the text being read. Most footnotes are essentially written in a very formal manner with proper punctuation and within other scholarly guidelines.
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It never even occurred to me that this juxtaposition of words, profanity, and sources of a (at the time) non-scholarly type, were capable of drawing such an astonishing feeling, or that such an alluring piece of writing was publishable. The sentences and ambiguous references were androgynous pieces of mixed sensations brought together under one shade of light. Describing these memories, it is so uneasy not to be poetic. When one unravels something so treasure-like but again so widely dug up, it hurts not to experience it three or four more times, in-a-row. That was the spell I fell beneath when putting together this journal. In essence, Allen Ginsberg’s “Footnote” to Howl presumes and continues living on to be appreciated by countless others. I hope the one who does not know of the Beats begins their journey with Howl and of course reads the “Footnote” over and over and over and over again like those who were once unaware and
It never even occurred to me that this juxtaposition of words, profanity, and sources of a (at the time) non-scholarly type, were capable of drawing such an astonishing feeling, or that such an alluring piece of writing was publishable. The sentences and ambiguous references were androgynous pieces of mixed sensations brought together under one shade of light. Describing these memories, it is so uneasy not to be poetic. When one unravels something so treasure-like but again so widely dug up, it hurts not to experience it three or four more times, in-a-row. That was the spell I fell beneath when putting together this journal. In essence, Allen Ginsberg’s “Footnote” to Howl presumes and continues living on to be appreciated by countless others. I hope the one who does not know of the Beats begins their journey with Howl and of course reads the “Footnote” over and over and over and over again like those who were once unaware and