After reading "Howl", the first and almost only thing in my mind is "wow." Reading it gives me an image of a disastrous world, and even though I personally have not been exposed to even heard of what was mentioned in the poem its sad to say that it still was reality. The impression that I got from this author's poem was of what his mind portrayed the world as. He mentions numerous things that astound me, but yet I can easily picture them in my mind. Even though I've never been exposed to any of the things he mentions I can still see what the author is trying to display in his writing.
             While reading "Howl" I found myself on more than one occasion asking myself, "Are we allowed to read this?" But as Ginsberg goes on and I read over things that have been mentioned to me in the past, the poem all seems more true. While I don't understand exactly what he is trying to pin point, I see how he stated many examples of small, everyday occurrences that are a part of the world. The poem was written in 1954 and I know that at that time the world was a much difference place. I don't however know just how much different it was. Reading this poem makes me almost thankful that I don't know how much different the past was. It even scares me in a sense mentioning things like "cutting wrists and jumping off bridges" and all sorts of crazy stuff. I guess that all the people mentioned in this poem were trying to make some sort of statement. Maybe to a whole group of people or maybe just to prove something to themselves. But all in all it still makes me wonder what kind of world it was back then that this author is referring to that would make people want to do that.
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