In The Poetry

Howl: Part 2

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! Garbage heap
of eyebrows and brains. Children screaming under the stairways!
Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!
Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch!
Moloch the [...]

An unfinished poem which I’ll finish sooner or later but I’d like to read the first half of now. [This is indeed an earlier version of the text of this poem and differs considerably from the final published text and as such is of considerable historical interest. The transcript below is of the version used [...]

I’m going to read one I did here in dear old Berkeley, called ‘A Supermarket in California’ – it being the supermarket down on a byroad near the university – on a rainy, lonely night. Of course I wrote this after I’d written a lot of great poetry – this is like coming down off [...]

Howl: Part 2

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! Garbage heap
of eyebrows and brains. Children screaming under the stairways!
Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!
Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch!
Moloch the [...]