HOWL

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,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz...


Allen Ginsberg, January 1970.

From the Elisson archives comes this picture of the quintessential hipster, Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, seen here at Miami International Airport with his mother. He was a mere 43 years old when this photograph was taken.