{"id":7514,"date":"2016-03-23T07:00:38","date_gmt":"2016-03-23T12:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/?p=7514"},"modified":"2016-03-21T12:46:23","modified_gmt":"2016-03-21T17:46:23","slug":"hank-williams-surprising-influence-on-the-poet-allen-ginsberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/2016\/03\/23\/hank-williams-surprising-influence-on-the-poet-allen-ginsberg\/","title":{"rendered":"Hank Williams\u2019 Surprising Influence on the Poet Allen Ginsberg"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe title=\"Howlin&#039; at the Moon - Hank Williams Sr.\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/FvsqlTGgKeg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">There is no denying that country music has an influence on society, but sometimes it is surprising how far-reaching that influence goes. \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.advocate.com\/arts-entertainment\/books\/2010\/06\/02\/remembering-peter-orlovsky\">Peter Orlovsky<\/a>, the life partner of Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, suspects that the name of Ginsberg\u2019s best-known poem <a href=\"http:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poem\/179381\">\u201cHowl\u201d<\/a> was influenced by Hank Williams\u2019 song \u201cHowlin&#8217; at the Moon\u201d. \u00a0Orlovsky says that he sang \u201cHowlin&#8217; at the Moon\u201d to Ginsberg during one of their many nighttime walks through San Francisco. \u00a0Days later Orlovsky saw the first draft of \u201cHowl\u201d on Ginsberg\u2019s desk. \u00a0Unfortunately Orlovsky and Ginsberg never actually had a conversation about whether the song influenced the poem and Ginsberg is not alive to confirm or deny Orlovsky\u2019s comments. \u00a0Nevertheless, it is extremely probable that Ginsberg heard Williams\u2019 music around the same time he was writing \u201cHowl\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cHowlin&#8217; at the Moon\u201d is an upbeat, humorous song about a man who is so in love that he is acting like a hound dog. \u00a0The song light-heartedly talks about how love can drive us crazy. \u00a0\u201cHowlin at the Moon\u201d even includes howling in the background by the fiddler Jerry Rivers. \u00a0The song was very successful and was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.billboard.com\/artist\/276384\/hank-williams\/biography\">one of eight<\/a> of Williams\u2019 song to reach the Top Ten on the country music charts in 1951. \u00a0Although Williams\u2019 career was taking off in the early 1950\u2019s, his personal life was taking a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cmt.com\/artists\/hank-williams\/biography\/\">dark turn<\/a>. \u00a0He struggled with alcohol and drug abuse which lead to divorce, expulsion from the Grand Ole Opry, and eventually death. Ginsberg also did drugs, had a troubled love life, and struggled to fit in. Because of the similarities of the two men, Ginsberg may have felt like he could relate to Williams and might have even considered Williams to be one of the outcasts that he writes about.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cHowl\u201d was written in 1955 and is well known for its long, rhythmic lines that criticize the widespread materialism and suburbanization of society in America in the 1950\u2019s. \u00a0\u201cHowl\u201d begins with the famous line \u201c<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked\u201d and goes on to describe the experiences of himself, his friends, and other outcasts of the generation. \u00a0\u201cHowl\u201d vividly describes controversial topics like homosexual sex, drug use, and mental illness using profane language which lead to a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/news_and_politics\/life_and_art\/2010\/09\/how_howl_changed_the_world.html\">court case in 1957<\/a> to determine if the poem was obscene. \u00a0The judge ruled that \u201cHowl\u201d was not obscene and had \u201credeeming social importance\u201d. \u00a0To this day, \u201cHowl\u201d is widely regarded as one of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/04\/09\/books\/review\/09marcus.html?_r=2\">most important poems<\/a> in American literature and has a lasting influence on society.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2016\/03\/50s_family.png\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-7515\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-7515\" src=\"http:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2016\/03\/50s_family-300x196.png\" alt=\"50s_family\" width=\"383\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2016\/03\/50s_family-300x196.png 300w, https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2016\/03\/50s_family.png 614w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 383px) 100vw, 383px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">So how, if at all, could \u201cHowlin&#8217; at the Moon\u201d have influenced \u201cHowl\u201d? The song \u201cHowlin at the Moon\u201d makes listeners think of a happy couple that is about to get engaged and probably will\u00a0have a wholesome, suburban family like so many others in the 1950\u2019s. \u00a0After marriage, we can assume that the man would stop acting like a dog, become a domesticated family man, and probably stop howling. \u00a0Ginsberg might have thought this man was giving up his originality in order to conform to the cookie-cutter lifestyle of the 50\u2019s. \u00a0\u201cHowl\u201d suggests that people should continue to &#8220;howl at the moon&#8221; instead of conforming and that there is something special about those who do not fit in. \u00a0Whether or not \u201cHowlin&#8217; at the Moon\u201d actually influenced \u201cHowl\u201d is not known, but we can speculate how country music influences even the most unlikely works.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is no denying that country music has an influence on society, but sometimes it is surprising how far-reaching that influence goes. \u00a0Peter Orlovsky, the life partner of Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, suspects that the name of Ginsberg\u2019s best-known poem &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/2016\/03\/23\/hank-williams-surprising-influence-on-the-poet-allen-ginsberg\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-post-2","category-honky-tonk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7514"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7517,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7514\/revisions\/7517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}