I remember the first time I read Allen Ginsberg. I was in high school, 16, and in my third year, where within my textbook I stumbled upon the poem, ‘A Supermarket in California.’ At the time, I was too interested in Emily Dickinson and the Romantics to be so astounded by this free verse poem that has since remained with me all these years. I eventually came to learn this is how writing works—or any art for that matter. One might stumble upon it, and at first, it leaves little impression because…well, perhaps one’s mind needs to mature. Reread it, however, and then again years later, and as Don Moss might say, ‘Your imagination will be lit.’

Fortunately, the same can be said about Howl (2010), which I might have stumbled upon when I still had a Netflix subscription. I knew when I first saw this film that it was a good, clever rendering of the story behind Ginsberg’s writing of Howl, as it also touches upon the public trial that followed. Howl, the poem, was published by City Lights Press in 1956 and was later banned for obscenity, resulting in poet and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti being deemed not guilty in a court of law (seems extreme, doesn’t it?) for publishing said obscenity. […]