From Washington to Hollywood, once again those crazed stanzas echo and howl, drunk on adjectives yet oddly dispassionate, like a newspaper dispatch, dateline surreal:
<em>
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 . . .</em>

Fifty-five summers after Allen Ginsberg wrote his shocking masterpiece "Howl," the poem still provokes, inspires, sells.

There's a bit of a "Howl" boomlet going on -- books, photographs, an upcoming movie starring James Franco and, most immediately, a "Howl in the City" series of readings and music Friday and Saturday in Washington....