Holy Rage

Allen Ginsberg wrote with a frantic energy of someone who, to stay alive, had to howl, because the world was not a place that accepted him. Ginsberg unleashed his rage in his poem, "Howl", so the world that refused to see him had to look. Even though we have different life experiences, this poem brought me to fan the same rageful fire in my gut, as Ginsberg. This is a fire born from suffering and grief, that relies on creative outlets like writing, art, music and movement, to survive.

Our world is like a popularity contest; whose rules are made for those who conform to the majority of the population. Many of us work hard to stay within that norm so as to not cause more waves than needed. But when life pushes us further than we can manage, we are left in the struggle to survive, and while our brains push back telling us we must follow the rules, we are forced to survive through our true birthright, expression and creativity.

That’s why Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” spoke to me on a level deeper than predictable poetry. His was a poem of spirit and protest. This poem was an act of defiance against a country filled with people doing what they were told to do even if that meant living a miserable life. When the world tells us to conform, deterring us from expression, eventually all our suppressed energy must come out.

In 1950's post war America, Ginsberg howls for those who no longer fit into the clean lines of American life. He howls for the ones who feel too much and think too deeply in a society that rewards obedience over authenticity.

Like many of us do, Ginsberg was searching for meaning in a world where traditional religion no longer provided it, because when the world stops working for us, we either grin and bear it, or find a new religion. For Ginsberg, that search took the form of poetry, jazz, friendship, and at times, drugs. While he wrote about using drugs as a way to escape, he also wrote about longing to move towards something, to touch the sacred through less conventional means. He sought transcendence in art, sex, drugs and raw honesty.

Ginsberg was writing as, a gay man in the 1950s, when being openly gay was dangerous. That alone made him an outsider, and that exclusion fueled the fire behind “Howl.” His rage and tenderness exist side by side because he’s writing from the edge of society, where the people he loved and the way he loved was considered deviant and sinful. That juxtaposition of being both silenced and fully alive gives his poetry its power. His howl is his refusal to hide in the shadows.

Many people live on the margins due to neurodivergent minds shaped in their DNA, their childhood, or both, yet sadly our society still wants to tuck them away. Most people move so quickly they don't have time, and don't want to deal with those floating outside the norms. We are so stuck in our pre-frontal cortex, thinking about what comes next, and what "worthy" person we need to make happy, that we forget we all deserve a breath of freedom. Instead of logic standing alone, it should serve creativity, not silence it. We need to use our structure and discipline not to squeeze creation out of our days but to make room for it.

Ginsberg understood that too. In “Howl,” he writes of those “who thew their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for eternity outside of time," rejecting the idea that life has to be measured, scheduled, or reasonable to have meaning. That image feels like freedom, in that the moment you let go of logic long enough to touch something eternal.

When we create, we leave traces of our humanity behind. A painting, a poem, a small act of beauty that each says, I was here. I felt this. I tried to make sense of it. Creation connects us to ourselves, to others, and to something larger than us. It reminds us that life is more than survival.

That’s what “Howl” gives me, a reminder that it’s okay to fall apart, as long as we find our way back through making something. Ginsberg’s howl isn’t just anger; it’s devotion. It’s the sound of a man searching for God in a world that’s forgotten that deep inside them is where we are meant to live, from the inside out, not the other way around. We find God in what we create and leave to the world. That is living true.

I believe we are here to create, and to honor the sacred part of ourselves that logic can’t reach. Ginsberg howled for a generation that had lost its soul, and for a generation trying desperately for acceptance in their choices to live authentically and find their own pathway to God.