After
Howl and Other Poems
(57 pages) was published in 1956, Allen Ginsberg liked to recite
it in San Francisco's beatnik jazz coffee houses.
Our good friends, the various levels of government, tried
unsuccessfully to outlaw the book as "obscene." The latest reprint
(1991) is a facsimile from the same publisher, City Lights Books,
that had to fight the 1956 charge. Fellow poet Lawrence
Ferlinghetti, who founded City Lights Books, once went to jail
in Ginsberg's free speech fight.
The introduction is written by William Carlos Williams,
from whom Ginsberg admits receiving literary influence.
This volume isn't one of Amazon.com's bestsellers generally, but
it's one of their bestsellers in the poetry category.
More editorial reviews and readers' comments
on the linked book store page ...