Allen Ginsberg's Howl is much more than the most sensational book of poetry of 1957. Nothing goes to show how square the squares are so much as the favorable reviews they've given it. "Sustained shrieks of frantic defiance," "single-minded frenzy of a raving madwoman," "paranoid memories," "childish obscenity" - they think it's all so negative. Also - which is much more important - they think there is something unusual about it. Listen you - do you really think your kids act like the bobby soxers in those wholesome Coca-Cola ads? Don't you know that across the table from you at dinner sits somebody who looks on you as an enemy who is planning to kill him in the immediate future in an extremely disagreeable way? Don't you know that if you were to say to your English class, "It is raining," they would take it for granted you were a liar? Don't you know that they never tell you nothing? That they can't? That faced with the system of values which coats you like the insulating rompers of an aircraft carrier's "hot papa" - they simply can't get through, can't, and won't even try any more to communicate? Don't you know this, really? If you don't, you're headed for a terrible awakening. Howl is the confession of faith of the generation that is going to be running the world in 1965 and 1975 - if it's still there to run. "The Poetry of the New Violence"? It isn't at all violent. It is your violence it is talking about. It is Hollywood or the censors who are obscene. It is Dulles and Khrushchev who are childishly defiant. It is the "media" that talk with the single-minded frenzy of a raving madwoman.