This story was very interesting to read because it really hit home with me, being a college student and all. The first lines, "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" explains what Ginsberg saw during his college years and what so many of us witness or even go through during school. I think his personal testimony of what he may have witnessed was a bit more extreme than what I see here at Clemson, but all the same, I see people and sometimes myself, waste away our intelligence through partying and not taking school seriously enough.
"Who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy" is one of my favorite lines in this story. Ginsberg uses intense imagery throughout "Howl" and this line displays his perfect choice of words wonderfully. Another line stood out to me, "Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! Ten years' animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of time!". I literally laughed out loud when I read this line because it is so true about what young people think they are having or going through during college and when you think about it coming from Ginsberg's point of view it seems like a joke. I feel like he is being sarcastic and I ended up laughing at myself. By the end of the poem I wasn't sure if Ginsberg had been talking about Carl Solomon the entire time, or just towards the end. I was confused as to if all of the experiences mentioned in the beginning had been Carl Solomon's, or just anyone Ginsberg saw wasting away their college years. I really enjoyed reading this although at some point I was a little shocked at the vulgarity or I didn't understand parts of it, but as a whole, I liked this story.
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