Howl; or a Pocketful of Poetry

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

There may be no more famous late twentieth-century poem -- or poem beginning -- than this.

Howl, first published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights Bookstore (San Francisco) in 1956, remains Ginsberg's best-known work. The City Lights website states that over a million copies have been printed; I know I've owned at least two copies, so far.

Other collections of Ginsberg's poems include Reality Sandwiches, Kaddish, Planet News, The Fall of America, Mind Breaths, Plutonian Ode, White Shroud, Cosmopolitan Greetings, and Death & Fame. Ferlinghetti's/City Lights' Pocket Poet Series also includes Ferlinghetti himself (Pictures of the Gone World) , Gregory Corso, Julio Cortazar, Jack Kerouac, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Anne Waldman.

The idea of small, easily-carried books of poetry is an old one. "Chap-books" have been around, in the language and as objects, since 1824 according to the OED, but since the early eighteenth century, by other lights, and perhaps nearly as far back as moveable type. They were meant to be popular, and meant to be cheap.

The next item, part of a series called the Little Leather Library, fits all these conditions. This title, The Coming of Arthur, part of Alfred Lord Tennyson's Idylls of the King, dates from about 1924.

The next piece is a bit of a puzzle. Bound in real leather, it's likely a production of Maine publisher Thomas Bird Mosher (1852-1923), issued around 1913. I've not yet been able to locate it in any bibliography of Mosher's productions.

Incidentally, the title page of Ginsberg's Howl uses a Whitman quote:

Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

Library Resources

You'll want to look at the Britannica Online article on the chapbook.

Literature Resource Center has several entries for Ginsberg.

Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music (Folkways, 1952) was reissued in 1997 as a six-CD set including, on the last CD (3B), a video of Harry Smith and a young Allen Ginsberg rummaging around in a Lower East Side apartment in the 50s. The Anthology itself, a long stare into what Greil Marcus calls "the old weird America," was an important impetus to the folk scare of the early 60s.

You know to use URSUS to look up Ginsberg, Tennyson, and Whitman. Do it!

On the Web

For Ginsberg, Shadow Changes Into Bone is a close-to-comprehensive clearinghouse of resources. City Lights Bookstore lives and thrives, and in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of Howl's publication offers a history of Howl . City Lights has a page of Ginsberg publications here.

Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music is parsed at Wikipedia (here) and sold at Smithsonian Folkways (here).

The Wiki folks explain the chapbook too.

The Little Leather Library has a home on the web here.

The Thomas Bird Mosher story can be found here.

"Hallelujah, I'm a Bum!"

The "Wobbly" or IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) Little Red Songbook has been through over forty editions since 1909 and is nearly universally recognized, at least among Americans of a certain age, wobbly or leftist or not, perhaps rivalling Ginsberg's Howl as the most backpack-able of rebel screeds. Some might argue that the Little Red Songbook has been the most widely-dispersed and longest-lasting achievement of the wobblies.

The official title is Songs of the Workers: To Fan the Flames of Discontent. Classics here include The Preacher and the Slave ("Long-haired preachers come out every night..."), Union Maid, Mr.Block, Dump the Bosses Off Your Back, Hallelujah, I'm a Bum!, There is Power in a Union, and of course, The International. Many were written by Joe Hill, the wobbly organizer executed in Utah in 1915.

To hear some of these sung, head to Fogler's Media Resource Center and ask for Don't Mourn -- Organize! or The Legends of Folk. Or go to Don't Mourn -- Organize! at Smithsonian Folkways for samples of several wobbly songs. Or go to the U. Utah Phillips' site, and go to the "Tapes and CDs page here. Scroll down to the CD "We Have Fed You All A Thousand Years" and click on the individual links to hear a number of the songs mentioned above. On Don't Mourn, Organize! Hazel Dickens does a chilling version of The Rebel Girl.


The Wobbly Songbook may have taken the idea of its basic format from nineteenth century hymnals. The essence here is portability, a small book that travels well, either in a pocket or a purse.


Shown here is a two-page spread from Hymns for the Use of the Methodist Episcopal Church, revised edition, 1852. The "Address" (preface) in front closes thus: "We exhort you, dear brethren, to sing with the spirit, and with the understanding also; and we shall rejoice to join you in time and in eternity."

There is no music reproduced here, only song texts. We presume that the leader of the singing, or the accompanist, or both, would set the tune, or that many congregants knew the tunes by heart.

Our last example of small follow-along music books is a miniature score (known also as a "study score," sometimes as a "pocket score"). This genre, according to the Oxford Companion to Music, arose in the late 19th century "to meet the demand created by the rise in popularity of public concerts and, later, recordings." They allow concert-goers to follow along as the program unfolds, though this practice appears to be fading. I remember attending performances by the Juilliard Quartet at Chicago's Orchestra Hall in Chicago in the late 70s and, across the hall, seeing multiple attendees reading their miniatures.


Reproduced here is the opening page of Beethoven's Trio No. 4, Opus 70, No. 1.

Another use of miniature scores is as a tool for students, giving access to the full (conductor's) score at a fraction of the price.

Fogler Resources

Fogler's Media Resource Center holds thousands of CDs from many genres. All recordings owned by Fogler are represented in URSUS and searchable by title and performer. In addition, the staff in this area are very knowledgeable about our holdings.

In URSUS, subject search terms such as hymns, songbooks, community music, and working class--songs and music lead to books similar to those displayed and discussed here.

The Special Collections Department holds a box of materials on the IWW (record here).

Miniature scores held in Fogler are shelved together at the end of the "M" call numbers, just before the "Folio M's" and the beginning of "N."

On the Web

The Digital Tradition/Mudcat Cafe is an enormous database of folk lyrics and music, as is The Traditional Ballad Index. History in Song focuses on topical songs of the twentieth century.

The wobblies live on at iww.org. They're temporarily out of stock of The Little Red Song Book; you can buy a reprint of the 1923 edition -- from the year of peak IWW membership -- here at Amazon.com.

Utah Phillips is the best-known of of any present-day wobbly. Other active artists known for their renditions of wobbly songs (and working in the same tradition) include Billy Bragg, Si Kahn, and Hazel Dickens (Wikipedia entry).

The Little Blue Books

The Little Blue Books were a publishing phenomenon of the era after the First World War and through the Second World War. They were small -- vest-pocket size, 3½" by 5" -- and ranged from 32 to 128 pages. They were inexpensive, varying in price throughout the era from 5 to 10 cents each. During the twenties, the publisher offered any 20 titles for a dollar, postpaid!

Their publisher, Emanuel Haldeman-Julius, a socialist, published a wide range of literature and poetry, "how-to" guides, philosophy, religion, political tracts, and guides to birth control and sexuality that were just this side of legal -- given the restrictive laws of the time.

The first titles published were Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol, The Rubiayat of Omar Kayyam, The Original Documents of the German Revolution, Private Notes of William Kaiser and Keynes' How to Mend by Treaty.

In many ways the Little Blue Books can be seen as the forerunners of the modern paperback, though Haldeman-Julius' methods of production, promotion, and distribution have probably never been duplicated. Haldeman-Julius kept all profitable titles in stock and is said to have averaged 2/10s of a cent profit on each book.

In The First Hundred Million, H-J made the case that his book sales were a pretty good barometer of American culture and opinion, of the interests and attitudes of the population.

By the time of his death in 1951, Haldeman-Julius had printed over 2000 distinct titles and over 500 million copies. Besides the Little Blue Books there ere numerous other "small" book series, and various "mid-sized" series too.

Fogler Resources

An URSUS search on Haldeman-Julius leads to his autobiography, The First Hundred Million, and to Dust, a novel authored with his wife, available as an e-book through a statewide subscription to NetLibrary.

Short potted biographies of Haldeman-Julius may be found in the reference sources American National Biography and in American Reformers (links to URSUS records). Contemporaneous articles about him may be located in The New York Times Historical and through JSTOR. America: History and Life points to a few articles locating the Little Blue Books in an historical context. A search on Haldeman-Julius in Literature Resource Center yields a history of his publishing house.

On the Web

Haldeman-Julius's papers are divided among three libraries, the Lilly Library at the University of Indiana (finding aid), the Library of the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle (finding aid), and the Leonard H. Axe Library at Pittsburg State University, Pittsburg, Kansas (finding aid).

There are also Haldeman-Julius materials at Kansas State and California State-Northridge.

The Axe Library (great name!) provides a checklist , divided into 4 sections, of all of the Little Blue Books (1-500, 501-1000, 1001-1500, 1501-1915).

Kent State University's Special Collections has a large collection of the Little Blue Books, but as well holds runs of some of the other series published by Haldeman-Julius: the Ten Cent Pocket Series, People's Pocket Series, Appeal Pocket Series, Pocket Series, Five Cent Pocket Series, Fillers, the Critic and Guide Series well as books in the various mid-sized series.

The Secular Web Library includes four essays by Haldeman-Julius.


Our Little Blue Books shown here are part -- a small part --of an extensive collection of materials donated to Fogler by Professor Emeritus David C. Smith.

The Roly-Poly Pudding

The Roly-Poly Pudding Or, The Tale of Samuel Whiskers (1908) is one of Beatrix Potter's most beloved works. Artfully-limned characters, exacting illustrations, and clever dialog combine to create a high-drama adventure.

The reader is prepared to enter into the nuanced cares and concerns of the animal world through Potter's dedication of the work to the rat "SAMMY."

Below a fine line portrait, Sammy is lauded as "the intelligent pink-eyed representative of a persecuted (but irrepressible) race[,] an affectionate little friend, and most accomplished thief".

We begin the story...

ONCE upon a time there was an old cat, called Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit, who was an anxious parent. She used to lose her kittens continually, and whenever they were lost they were always in mischief!

There are three kittens, and Tom is the most vexing:

"I've lost my dear son Thomas; I'm afraid the rats have got him."

Mrs. Tabitha and her visitor, Cousin Ribby, look everywhere, and find Moppet and Mittens, but not Tom.

Ribby and Tabitha searched and searched. They both heard a curious roly-poly noise under the attic floor. But there was nothing to be seen.

In fact, Tom has climbed up inside an old chimney and been captured by rats. There's a struggle between Tom and an old rat couple, ending with them tying him up tightly with string.

The rats decide to make the unfortunate Tom into a (baked) pudding. The rat couple steal dough, flour, butter, and a rolling pin from the kitchen. Moppet and Mittens testify:

"Oh! Mother, Mother, there has been an old man rat in the dairy -- a dreadful 'normous big rat, Mother; and he's stolen a pat of butter and the rolling-pin."

Ribby and Tabitha looked at one another.

"A rolling-pin and butter! Oh, my poor son Thomas!" exclaimed Tabitha, wringing her paws.

"A rolling-pin?" said Ribby. "Did we not hear a roly-poly noise in the attic when we were looking into that chest?"

Meanwhile the rats continue at their pudding-preparation:

Tom Kitten bit and spat, and mewed and wriggled; and the rolling-pin went roly-poly, roly; roly, poly, roly. The rats each held an end.

"His tail is sticking out! You did not fetch enough dough, Anna Maria."

"I fetched as much as I could carry," replied Anna Maria.

"I do not think" -- said Samuel Whiskers, pausing to take a look at Tom Kitten -- "I do not think it will be a good pudding. It smells sooty."

Mrs. Twitchit summons John Joiner, a carpenter (and a scotty-type dog) to saw a hole into the floor in an effort to find Tom. John Joiner lifts a floor plank and Tom is found and freed.

But John Joiner continues to be troubled by the presence of rats:






Eventually he gives up the effort, goes downstairs, and is invited to stay to dinner.

The dumpling had been peeled off Tom Kitten, and made separately into a bag pudding, with currants in it to hide the smuts.*

They had been obliged to put Tom Kitten into a hot bath to get the butter off.

John Joiner smelt the pudding; but he regretted that he had not time to stay to dinner, because he had just finished making a wheel-barrow for Miss Potter, and she had ordered two hen-coops.

And with a little more on Miss Potter's sighting of the rats as they escape, and Moppet's and Mitten's future careers as rat-catchers (and Tom's life-long fear of rats), our story comes to a close.

Beatrix Potter

Beatrix Potter was an acute observer of the natural world, a gifted and exacting scientific illustrator, and hoped to make a career for herself in the biological sciences. She was an accomplished mycologist, and may have been one of the first to present evidence that lichen are in fact a symbiotic combination of two separate species, an alga and a fungus.

The mores of the age -- the Linnean Society, for example did not admit women -- and the insensitivity of individuals -- one botanist told her that her drawing lacked scientific utility -- effectively shut her off from professional scientific pursuits. A review in the Taxon of May 1999 (available here through JSTOR) describes the "trouble about the paper " - her paper "On the Germination of Spores of Agaricineae" read by the mycologist George Massee before the Linnean Society in 1897.

She continued to draw, and her interest in illustration eventually led her to create illustrated children's tales.

Fogler Resources

A search in URSUS for Potter as an author leads to a number of her tales, especially in the Learning Materials Center. A search by subject leads to biographies, criticism, and collections of her correspondence, including Beatrix Potter's Americans: Selected Letters by UMaine's Jane Crowell Morse.

The Fogler Children's Literature Portal is a good starting point for critiques of Potter's children's works, biographical essays, and references on children's literature of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, as well, of course, for more current children's authors and works.

The MLA Bibliography is a good source for critical articles on Potter and her work, as is Literature Resource Center.

On the Web

The full text of The Roly-Poly Pudding, with scanned illustrations, is available here, at the University of Virginia's Electronic Text Center. The ETC also makes available a number of other Potter tales.

A web search on "Beatrix Potter" results in an enormous number of links to commercial, amateur, and scholarly sites devoted to Potter, her world, and her work. A few of interest are listed here, but no particular endorsement is implied!

• Beatrix Potter (Wikipedia) (includes a list of her works)
• The Beatrix Potter Society
• World of Peter Rabbit (F. Warne site)

* A "smut," we learn from the Oxford English Dictionary, is, among other things, soot or sooty matter, or a particle of sooty matter. Just the thing to flavor a pudding!