“Allen was born June 3, 1926. While he was a boy in Patterson [New Jersey], his mother was in and out of mental hospitals. She died in pilgrim State Hospital in 1955. Ginsberg has written several poems for his mother, including Howl – curiously, because it’s full title is Howl for Carl Solomon… “I realized after I read it that it was addressed to her,” he says, sitting on the bed with two cats playing at his feet and a parakeet in a cage intruding an occasional raucous reminder of its existence. “I realized that Howl is actually to her her rather than to Carl in a sense. Because the emotion that comes from it is built on my mother, not on anything as superficial as a later acquaintance, such as Carl.”
-from Amazon:
