a small REACTION! to howl.

I must say that I was extremely shocked to read the words that I found located within the contents of Ginsberg's Howl...of course the shock was somewhat of a delayed affect due to the fact that it took several pages to get used to the fact that Howl has almost no punctuation,
whose writer almost refuses to fold and use friendly dots and ticks to separate one thought from another,
who almost defies the physics of the sentence structure we came to know and love in kindergarten,
who obviously has the biggest lung capacity in the world and thinks everone else shouldn't waste time to breathe,
who has had some pretty obvious affect on my writing in this blog.
There, that's all I'll do. This style that he chose to use, at first, seemed to me to be screaming for attention, but not in the "I'm a genius, and this may catch on sort of way," but moreso in the "what can I do to seem more artsy, and brilliant." I wasn't sure if he really was serious about this, and quite frankly, I found it difficult to take him seriously at the same time. Of course, keep in mind that this was only a few pages in. After a good time period of biting the bullet and reading line after seemingly endless line, I started to take things in. EMPHASIZE STARTED.
It wasn't until class that I really got to be the poetry sponge that I long to be, and actually soak in the mess of "stanzas in gibberish." I have a strong feeling that the reading aloud portion of class had a great deal to do with this drawn process. Putting into contrast the poet in addition to his work with the time period and societies he coexisted, allowed for the pieces to not only fit, but really blend together. I no longer see the poem by its lonesome in the pages of the pint sized book its printed on, but when i look at it now, i see the struggles he really was forced to deal with; for lack of better words, this really messed up, jacked up, bizarre poem really does make strange sense.
I went from "what the hell is Susan making us read!!!????" to "hey this dude is starting to make sense." Granted, I don't agree with the majority of things Ginsberg almost boasts about (good / bad)...*AJ - if you read this I'm totally with you on the MAN-boy issue....bleh.*
I do think it's possible to not agree with a word in a poem, but come to the conclusion that the poem makes sense, and the reader may still walk away empty handed in the sense that every word on the page is disagreed with, but simultaneously - be loaded with knowledge on HOW to approach a new type of literature.
This exercise made me realize how important it is to mix literature with history. I've often contemplated what it would be like to ask the poet themselves "what the heck did you mean by this?" due to the fact that so many elements can be misread / misinterpreted. Yesterday we dug deaper and looked at a gaggle of documents that help shed light on areas that were once so gray...and in a way, I feel like we did get some answers to "what did he mean by this?"