Allen Ginsberg: "Howl" and "The Shrouded Stranger"

A detailed Summary of Allen Ginsberg: "Howl" and "The Shrouded Stranger"

Allen Ginsberg?s ?The Shrouded Stranger? (1949) and ?Howl? (1955-56) have very similar themes, but their style and structure are very different. They both have very sexual parts to them, not necessarily homosexual, but just a general sexuality. Both poems make mention of homelessness and poverty numerous times. There are mythological allusions in ?The Shrouded Stranger? while there are religious references in ?Howl,? in addition to hallucinatory drug references. The structure of ?The Shrouded Stranger? is in very conventional verse, while ?Howl? runs on and on endlessly, like a rant.

Ginsberg is known for the blatant sexuality that is in his poetry, and neither of these poems are exceptions. In ?The Shrouded Stranger,? it is particularly clear in the last verse: ?Who?ll come lay down in the dark with me/Belly to belly and knee to knee/Who?ll look into my hooded eye/Who?ll lay down under my darkened thigh?? There is a certain desperation about these lines, it makes one feel pity for Ginsberg; he is lonely and wants sex for companionship more than anything else. He had not yet met Peter Orlovsky, and he had no love (or anything like it) to speak of. In ?Howl,? the sexuality is much more graphic and physical, i.e. ??Who howled on t

In ?Howl,? the entire first part of the poem is actually about homeless artists. It begins ?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,/angryheaded 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?? The poem goes on, every line beginning with ?Who?? and in turn, everything in it is about the ?best minds? of Ginsberg?s time. ?Howl? is an epic about artists? struggles. ?The Shrouded Stranger? is more personal, and simply covers Ginsberg?s own problems. The second verse reads, ?My flesh is cinder my face is snow/I walk the railroad to and fro/When city streets are black and dead/The railroad embankment is my bed?? He is telling us that he is so!

There are also allusions of spirituality in both poems. In ?The Shrouded Stranger,? this is achieved through mythological hints ? In one verse, Ginsberg makes himself out to be something resembling the Sphinx, a bird fabled to burn up and be reborn again once every 500 years. ?I dream that I have burning hair/Boiled arms that claw the air/The torso of an iron king/And on my back a broken wing?? He also makes reference to Greek mythology. ?When hot Apollo humps my back? ? Apollo is the Greek God of healing and life, and this line is in fact much

Some common words found in the essay are:
Shrouded Stranger, Atlantic Caribbean, Peter Orlovsky, Peyote LSD, Greek God, Ugliness Ashcans, shrouded stranger, Moloch Moloch, Lewis Carroll, Angel Death, Ginsbergs Howl, moloch moloch, actually homeless, religious references,

Approximate Word count = 1031
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English