It details why the destruction has taken place while giving Moloch various names and describing Moloch’s attributes. Part 2 (Lines 79-93) gives a name to the destruction first mentioned in Part 1: Moloch. Ginsberg closes Part 1 by stating that those destroyed had “the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies ” (Line 78). Though the stanzas reference friends, lovers, and strangers in the past tense, Ginsberg breaks this thought pattern in Line 72 to address Carl Solomon in the present tense (“ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you’re really in the total animal soup of time-” (Line 72)) before returning to the past tense. The best minds-Ginsberg’s friends and lovers-fall victim to both physical and mental ailments including suicide, death, mental illness, drug use, (un)fulfilling casual sex, the oppressive US government, capitalism, formal poetry, and heteronormative values. While Lines 1-3 briefly describe who these “best minds” are, the rest of Part 1 (Lines 4-78) uses anaphora and cataloguing to detail both the “who” and the “how.” Part 1 is also one long run-on sentence the unwieldy lines spill over to the next like sneaker waves. He’s eyewitness to this doom and gloom, cataloguing its widespread hold in Part 1. “Howl” opens without pulling any punches: Ginsberg unreservedly decries the destruction of “the best minds of generation” (Line 1).
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