April 10

I'm going to stick with writing about part three of "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg.  The poem "Howl" was actually dedicated to Carl Solomon, a fellow poet of Ginsberg and part three speaks about him.  Solomon and the narrator are both in Rockland, a mental hospital near New York City.  Ginsberg was in the mental hospital as an alternative to jail and Solomon was their voluntarily.  Some of what is written are acts that Solomon actually committed, but others relate to things they discussed whilst imprisoned together.  At line one hundred-thirty, it is written:

I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-journey on the highway
across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western
night

These lines are confusing, but suggest that Ginsberg feels that Solomon was drowning in that mental hospital and that Ginsberg came to him one night and offered a shelter from a deteriorating mind.  Solomon had institutionalized himself as a way of admitting defeat to Dada, or the belief in anarchy.