When Reading the poem there was a sense of pity and despair in the words. We are given Ironic comparisons between his communities Politics, Poets, Jazz musicians,and drug addicts are all " unrepresented outcasts" and according to him "Best minds of his generation"As the poem cont's we are sensing that the molding and up rise of industrialization is his point of demise of the great minds.
My favorite lines are :
"who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores
where they thought they were growing old and cried".
This was the most symbolic imagery of change and unwiliness of the change that came to those who were used to a certain lifestyle.The thing he refers to is taking over and making people change and conform into a style of living which is undesirable and unwanted. His people have been reformed into this mold.
Towards the end we are introduced to Rock land the coming to acceptance with what is the America and the sheets of cover up. This poem had a sad but rhythmic sense of tone in it. it brought out a motion in the words.
Not sure that the speaker of Howl "accepts" Moloch America, or Rockland, the assylum where one of his closest friends, Carl Soloman, was functionally destroyed--but there is a sense of visionary despair throughout the poem. Focus on Part I; the study materials will be helpful here. The poem is a bitter indictment of the socio-political condition of mid-1950s America
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