Poem

You’ll begin by reading the poem in its entirety. Please note that the title of the collection is Howl and Other Poems, but the poem itself, also titled ‘Howl’, only runs from pages 1-28. That is all you need to read for now.

Next, you’ll focus onthe element of Language, specifically Metaphor. Go through the poem and

1. find 3 examples of Metaphor in the poem
2. Provide a quote that’s no more than 2 lines long. This is important to do because this will force you to focus and analyze poems based on the line.
3. Then for each quote, explain what the metaphor is and what it’s communicating to the reader.

As an example of how you can approach this assignment, I’m going to draw from, not even a line, but a phrase that’s used early in the poem:

Example 1: “angel headed hipsters burning” – In this phrase, the description ‘angel headed’ gives the image of halos or glowing auras around the heads of these so called ‘hipsters’. They not so subtly suggest angelic qualities about the individuals, but also has suggestions ofa glowresulting from an altered state (maybe through drugs), ‘hipsters’ aloneis a term that has many meanings, such as cool and in-tune, as in ‘He’s hip!’ But these angelic, hip individuals are also ‘burning’, which could be a burningfrom sexual desire or from an addiction or possibly a need for spiritual connection, especially since the next line refers to a “starry dynamo”.