Allen Ginsberg: Howl And Other Poems [CRAFT RECORDINGS]

Why you'll love it

This limited edition reissue marks Ginsberg's 100th birthday and replicates the original album artwork. It's the defining voice of the Beat Generation reading his own words.

This edition

• Limited edition
• Original album artwork replicated

About the album

Plenty of poems get read aloud; very few get read aloud and then argued over by a judge. Ginsberg wrote "Howl" in 1954 and 1955 in San Francisco, first performed it at the Six Gallery reading in October 1955, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights published it the following year. On October 3, 1957, Judge Clayton W. Horn ruled the poem was not obscene, and "Howl" went on to be counted among the great works of twentieth-century American literature.

This 1959 recording puts the poet's own voice behind the words. Side B carries "Howl" itself, then "The Sunflower Sutra" and "Footnote To Howl," while side A gathers "A Supermarket In California," "Transcription Of Organ Music," "America," "Europe, Europe" and a passage from "Kaddish." Heard in Ginsberg's own phrasing, those famously long lines make sense as something built for the ear as much as the page.

Craft Recordings brought it back for the centennial with the original cover, and it remains the natural place to start with the Beats on record. We file it under Non-Music, which is the one thing it plainly isn't.

Also at Kops: more Allen Ginsberg on vinyl · browse Soundtracks

Tracklist

Listen

On Craft Recordings (cat# CR01184), a reissue of the 1959 album.