Sedam's Desafinado
Ginsberg’s Irrelevance
Ginsberg’s “Howl”
Ginsberg’s “Howl” was written and published in the late 1950s, and its publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti was put on trial for obscenity. The poem dramatizes certain acts; for example, those “who let themselves be ****ed in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy.”
Ginsberg’s “Howl” also flaunts illegal drug use, and although Ferlinghetti was not convicted at trial, because professors of literature were able to convince the judge that the work had socially redeeming qualities, the truth is that the work celebrated but did not criticize the depravity it dramatized.
Traditional readers, teachers, and parents have continued to insist that Ginsberg’s hysterics are indecent. (Lest anyone doubt this claim, please notice the quotation above; this Web site will not allow an exact quotation from the poem.) The poem’s main claim to fame is its clash with decency, not its literary value.
Desafinado
The term “desafinado” is a musical term, denoting that a sound is “out of tune,” flat, or off key. The speaker of Sedam’s poem “Desafinado” contends that the ranting of the Beat poets, Allen Ginsberg and his ilk, are decidedly “out of tune” with human morality. The poem consists of twenty-four lines; it is a free-verse poem, with Sedam’s signature line indentions.
The speaker of the poem has experienced a poetry reading by one the infamous Beat’s, possibly Ginsberg himself, and the speaker asserts that Ginsberg is traveling forth from the speaker’s state, Indiana or Ohio, to Kansas, “more black than May’s tornadoes / showering a debris of art.”
Littering the Minds
The middle western states referred to here are well-known for their tornadoes, and so the speaker metaphorically likens Ginsberg’s littering the minds of the people with his art to the tornadoes that litter the landscape in the mid-west.
The speaker rebukes the Beat poet and his ilk for their dragging poetry and art through “paths of twisted fear and hate / and dread, uprooted, despising all judgment.” The speaker makes it clear that he does not think the “bourgeois” is perfect and therefore above “judgment.”
Nevertheless, he does question who is capable of offering that judgment. He makes it clear that such a judgment of values cannot effectively be made by “Junkies, queers, and rot.”
No Redeeming Value
That particular lot offers nothing to society. They merely “sit on their haunches and howl / that the race should be free for pot / and horney honesty[.]” The speaker alludes to the infamous “Howl,” which was coming into focus in the early 1960s.
But the speaker then avers that he would agree with radical protests if they ever “solved” a “crisis.” The speaker declares that the “minor resolve” and “grossness” of the radical complainers who just sit on their haunches and howl cannot, in fact, benefit humanity.
The speaker then asserts, “I protest your protest.” Instead of being persuaded by the “hairy irrelevancy” of the howling haunch sitters, this speaker revolts against the depravity of these loons. And the speaker bolsters his argument by stressing that he too has concerns about society; in fact, he is “more anxious than you / more plaintive than you / more confused than you.”
“An Investment in Humanity”
But the speaker then delivers the fatal punch that knocks out the puny protesters’ harangues; instead of protesting for the right to be selfish and self-aggrandized, this speaker’s struggle continues because he has “more at stake / an investment in humanity.”
The selfish hippy-sixties that brought moral equivalency and degeneracy to an entire generation began with Ginsberg’s “Howl.” This speaker delivers a moral judgment that attempts to mitigate that debauchery, even if it cannot obliterate it.
Also see Sandy Mitchell's article Allen Ginsberg's Howl: An Anthem for an Age
Malcolm M. Sedam
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