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THE POEM THAT CHANGED AMERICA
By: Jason Shinder
"Howl" Fifty Years Later
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
April 2006
336 pages
ISBN: 0374173443
Trade Size (reprint)
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Fiction Poetry
A tribute to GinsbergΓ―ΒΏΒ½s signature work, which stirred a generation of angel-headed hipsters to cultural rebellion. In 1956, City Lights, a small San Francisco bookstore, published Allen GinsbergΓ―ΒΏΒ½s Howl and Other Poems with its trademark black-and-white cover. The original edition cost seventy-five cents, but there was something priceless about its eponymous piece. Although it gave a voice to the new generation that came of age in the conservative years following World War II, the poem also conferred a strange, subversive power that continues to exert its influence to this day. Ginsberg went on to become one of the most eminent and celebrated writers of the second half of the twentieth century, and Γ―ΒΏΒ½HowlΓ―ΒΏΒ½ became the critical axis of the worldwide literary, cultural, and political movement that would be known as the Beat generation. The year 2006 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Γ―ΒΏΒ½Howl,Γ―ΒΏΒ½ and The Poem That Changed America will celebrate and shed new light on this profound cultural work. With new essays by many of todayΓ―ΒΏΒ½s most distinguished writers, including Frank Bidart, Andrei Codrescu, Vivian Gornick, Phillip Lopate, Daphne Merkin, Rick Moody, Robert Pinsky, and Luc Sante, The Poem That Changed America reveals the pioneering influence of Γ―ΒΏΒ½HowlΓ―ΒΏΒ½ down through the decades and its powerful resonance today.
 Media BuzzFresh Air - NPR - April 20, 2006
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