“Howl” by Allen Ginsberg: Holy! Holy! Holy!
Once in a great while, a poem comes along, that has so many hidden meanings you get lost in the spaces. There are an abundant amount of ways to interpret Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl.” To me, “Howl” depicts the five stages of loss and grief in an attempt to deal with Ginsberg’s emotional fallout from the loss of his friends. In 1969, Elizabeth Kubler Ross and David Kessler defined the five stages of loss and grief as 1.) Denial, 2.) Anger, 3.) Bargaining, 4). Depression and 5.) Acceptance (Kubler Ross & Kessler 2005). The following essay will identify specific lines in which “Howl” uses tone and imagery to portray aspects of all five stages. The first stage of loss and grief is denial. The line “who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword,” (Line 39) is Ginsberg’s way of trying …show more content…
He becomes so overwhelmed with the fact that he is just another skeleton. Looking at the bigger picture, we realize that just like everyone else, we all have skeletons to hide. Ginsberg is writing about those skeletons being exposed and that exposure may be the beginning to his path of healing.
Finally, the last stage is acceptance. This can be found in the Part IV of Ginsberg’s poem, “Footnote to Howl.” In this section he exclaims, “Everything is holy! everybody’s holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman’s an angel!” (Line 114). It seems as though he is saying everything is perfect, everything is golden and everyone is good. However, running through this entire section is an undercurrent of sarcasm. Almost as though he knows he has to comply in order to not sound like a raving
Once in a great while, a poem comes along, that has so many hidden meanings you get lost in the spaces. There are an abundant amount of ways to interpret Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl.” To me, “Howl” depicts the five stages of loss and grief in an attempt to deal with Ginsberg’s emotional fallout from the loss of his friends. In 1969, Elizabeth Kubler Ross and David Kessler defined the five stages of loss and grief as 1.) Denial, 2.) Anger, 3.) Bargaining, 4). Depression and 5.) Acceptance (Kubler Ross & Kessler 2005). The following essay will identify specific lines in which “Howl” uses tone and imagery to portray aspects of all five stages. The first stage of loss and grief is denial. The line “who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword,” (Line 39) is Ginsberg’s way of trying …show more content…
He becomes so overwhelmed with the fact that he is just another skeleton. Looking at the bigger picture, we realize that just like everyone else, we all have skeletons to hide. Ginsberg is writing about those skeletons being exposed and that exposure may be the beginning to his path of healing.
Finally, the last stage is acceptance. This can be found in the Part IV of Ginsberg’s poem, “Footnote to Howl.” In this section he exclaims, “Everything is holy! everybody’s holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman’s an angel!” (Line 114). It seems as though he is saying everything is perfect, everything is golden and everyone is good. However, running through this entire section is an undercurrent of sarcasm. Almost as though he knows he has to comply in order to not sound like a raving