Part I of the poem describes many writers and artists of the time, with whom Ginsberg was acquainted - including, but not only, Carl Solomon.

Not defeat at all for he has gone through defeat as if it were an ordinary experience, a trivial experience. The poem 'Howl' by Allen Ginsberg (which can be read online) is partly a savage general commentary on society and partly an expression of solidarity for the institutionalised fellow writer Carl Solomon. Part III of Howl is largely about the psychiatric confinement of Carl Solomon in mental institutions, but the same theme pops up in Part II. Original greyish-brown cloth illustrated in colour after a drawing by Robert La Vigne, grey endpapers, edges untrimmed. On the way he met a man named Carl Solomon with whom he shared among the teeth and excrement of this life something that cannot be described but in the words he has used to describe it. At the same time, there are general references to government and the enforcement of social norms. Morgan notes that although the colophon states that 275 copies were produced, 'several copies were misbound and about 20 sets of sheets were not bound due to a lack of adequate covers'.

It includes a new note by Ginsberg about the presentation here of Howl for the first time in tandem with the poetic continuation 'The Names' (written 1957, published in the Paris Review 1966), his 'autobiographical chronicle of Howl's same radiant persons living & dead adored to specify Names & deeds in extended eulogy - an embodyment sic of Howl's abstractions'. Ginsberg's masterpiece was first published by City Lights in 1956 in a much-reproduced wrappers format, but this is the first fine press edition.

First edition thus, one of 275 copies signed by the author, printed by Robert & Grabhorn and Andrew Hoyem on handmade paper from Goudy Modern type, with an illustrated cloth binding after a drawing by Robert La Vigne. About a week or two after he wrote both the poem about Vollmer and the line about Solomon, he composed the first part of Howl.

Carl solomon howl