d frenzy of a raving madwoman (Rosenthal 29).
             Besides putting the poem on trial for obscenity (in which Ginsberg was vindicated), critics also had the opinion that not only was the subject matter distasteful at the least but also that it was weak poetry to begin with.
             It is a "bad" poem- it's not said right. It should be said so that the impact of the anger slams in every line- a fury to life the reader from his chair, force him to get up and walk about to read the thing. The disappointment is that Mr. Ginsberg fails in this when he seems to have the thing so close in hand, and instead corrupts it with sentimentality, bathos, Buddha and hollow talk of eternity (Rumaker 36).
             Some of those who criticized the poetry of Ginsberg thought he was simply insane. He had previously been instituted in a psychiatric institute to get out of a longer jail sentence, only adding fuel to the fire. To some, it was simply easier to dismiss Ginsberg's poem as being the thoughts of an insane person rather than dealing with the intense emotional arsenal that "Howl" presents. For example, John Hollander wrote:
             The poem itself is a confession of the poet's faith, done into some 112 paragraphlike lines, in the ravings of a lunatic friend (to whom it is dedicated), and in the irregularities in the lines of those of his friends who populate his rather disturbed pantheon (Hollander 26).
             However, not all of the critique written on the poem was bad. To some, it was a sign of a new brazen, rhythmic style of poetry full of brilliant images of reality. One such defender wrote, "He is almost alone in his generation in his ability to make powerful poetry of the inherent rhythms of our speech, to push forward to conquests of a few of the earliest poems of Sandburg and of William Carlos Williams" (Rexroth 33).
             To understand the controversy surrounding this poem it is important to understand the time period ...