This scholarly close reading of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” considers the iconic poem through a four-part trickster framework: appetite, boundlessness, transformative power and a proclivity for setting and falling victim to tricks and traps. The book pursues various different narratives of the trickster Coyote and the historical and biographical contexts of “Howl” from a truly interdisciplinary perspective.
This study seeks to contribute to the current literature on the poetry of the Beats and of Allen Ginsberg, specifically his “Howl,” and the ways it continues to expand in meaning, depth and significance today.

Katherine Campbell Mead-Brewer serves as an Editorial Fellow for the International Association for Research on Service-learning and Community Engagement and as an editor for the Washington Independent Review of Books. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Katherine Campbell Mead-Brewer

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 216
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2013
pISBN: 978-0-7864-6469-2
eISBN: 978-1-4766-0296-7
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments vi
Preface 1
Introduction 9

Part I : Allen Ginsberg and the Trickster
1. I Am Large. I Contain Multitudes. 29
2. Considering Coyote 57

Part II : Coyote-ing “Howl”
3. Space, Place, and Traversing Boundaries 99
4. “Howl’s” Appetite 125
5. A Trick and a Trap 138
6. Smearing Borderlines 147
7. Transformation: Madman Bum and Angel 163

Epilogue 172
Notes 177
Bibliography 195
Index 203