Commentary
In January 1956, the iconoclastic leftist American poet Allen Ginsberg wrote “America,” a prose poem that laments the state of the country and the poet’s place in it. “America” was included in the short poetry collection entitled “Howl,” published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Publishers in November of the same year. In 1957, “Howl” became a cause célèbre as the centerpiece of People of the State of California v. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, an obscenity trial that would launch Ginsberg’s career and catapult the Beat literary movement into the national consciousness.
