Greg Palast on ‘Howl’
June 3rd, 2006
From Greg Palast on the 50th anniversary of Howl:
News Flash from the Asylum
Today is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl“.
You know:
“I see the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.”
Just before his death, and into my third or fourth midlife crisis, I decided to become a writer. Couldn’t decide between poetry and investigative journalism. Ginsberg read my poetry. He suggested journalism. And then he said, “You know, Greg, I’m an investigative reporter, too.”
Yes, he was. In 1956, Ginsberg sat at a kitchen table in San Francisco and wrote that his friends were going crazy. They could still hear the voice of Joe McCarthy ranting and, out the window, count the Pentagon contractors polishing new war heads. In an America gone mad, insanity was the best defense.
“The soul,” he reported, “should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse.”
And that’s still the news.
***
Greg Palast talks journalism a la Ginsberg with Laura Flanders tonight at 9:45 EDT on Radio Nation — check your Air America and Community Station listings. Armed Madhouse dispatches form the Front Lines of the class war will be released this Tuesday, 6-6-06 - for more information see www.GregPalast.com.
1 Comment Add your own
1. knowbuddhau | November 27th, 2007 at 11:42 am
KNOCK-KNOCK
(who’s there???)
MADNESS!
(madness who?)
KNOW! MADNESS YOU!
Although short in physical stature, Palast stands tall in my Pantheon, where, mindless Fool that he is, he remains unafraid to step on toes.
Ginsberg had to have a publicist call around to papers to tell them, “Howl” is a poetic event worthy of notice. We’ve been mind-f*cked for so long (that’s the process Naomi Klein calls the “shock doctrine”), we actually believe we are just dust motes, slaves on the plantation of someone else’s gods, creatures of the absolute tyrant-Creator of the universe. We don’t even hear it when our poets cry, Madness!
Who cares what poets say? Where’s the profit in poetry today? (Hint: hidden within.)
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