Source: The Dispatch
by Henry Begler
“What are we to make of Allen Ginsberg, and of Howl, on the 70th anniversary of its publication? The poem seems to belong more to popular culture than high culture, closer to Elvis or Easy Rider or ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ than Elizabeth Bishop or John Berryman. … Ginsberg’s magnum opus is brash, insistent, and unsubtle. It has never attracted the kind of critical scrutiny that other 20th-century poetry has …. Changing sexual mores have done to the Beats in this century what sniffy articles in National Review and Partisan Review failed to do in the last one: made them uncool, cringey, Bad Boyfriend Literature. … But Howl endures, and part of what keeps it alive these seven decades on is its pure musical quality. … it is perhaps the best-sounding American poem of the century.” (10/19/26)
https://thedispatch.com/article/allen-ginsberg-howl-counterculture/