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Repeating Allen | Academy of American Poets

poets.org · 2,233 words · saved by 1 readers

In this essay, Eileen Myles looks at the long lines, repetition, and context of Allen Ginsberg’s seminal work, “Howl.”

who lit cigarettes in boxcars, boxcars, boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grandfather night Whenever I teach “ Howl ,” I jump on this line . It’s my favorite because the thingness of the word (“boxcars boxcars boxcars’) is exactly what you see at a light while a train is passing—all throughout this poem Allen [Ginsberg] wrote cinematically but never more succinctly as he did in this line. Boxcars, boxcars, boxcars. It was what you saw, is all. “Howl” is remarkable because Allen did the complete thing—he wrote both a poem and a culture to put it in. Poetry went to the movi

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