You can read the poem in print or listen to it on the Internet -- but you won’t hear it on the radio

Last year it was 50 years since Lawrence Ferlinghetti published Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” -- and poets all over have marked the anniversary of “the poem that changed the world” by gathering to read it aloud and to recall the impact of its first public performance at the famous Six Gallery reading. Today is another important 50th anniversary for “Howl” -- it was October 3, 1957 that Judge Clayton Horn ended the obscenity trial of Ferlinghetti and City Lights by declaring that “Howl” possessed redeeming social importance and literary merit and should not be censored. How sad and ironic it was, then, to discover in my morning paper the news that “Howl” is being kept off the radio airwaves for fear of FCC sanctions. Is this not censorship all over again?

from The San Francisco Chronicle:
“‘Howl’ Too Hot to Hear, 50 years after poem ruled not obscene, radio fears to air it,” by Joe Garafoli
“Fifty years ago today, a San Francisco Municipal Court judge ruled that Allen Ginsberg's Beat-era poem ‘Howl’ was not obscene. Yet today, a New York public broadcasting station decided not to air the poem, fearing that the Federal Communications Commission will find it indecent and crush the network with crippling fines. Free-speech advocates see tremendous irony in how Ginsberg’s epic poem -- which lambastes the consumerism and conformism of the 1950s and heralds a budding American counterculture -- is, half a century later, chilled by a federal government crackdown on the broadcasting of provocative language.”

from The New York Times:
“‘Howl’ in an Era That Fears Indecency,” by Patricia Cohen
“Those who happened to click on Pacifica.org yesterday could hear Allen Ginsberg intoning, ‘I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,’ along with the rest of his classic poem ‘Howl.’”

from Pacifica Radio on the Web:
Howl Against Censorship
Rather than risk FCC fines that would bankrupt the station, WBAI (the public radio station in New York) and the Pacific Radio Network are commemorating Judge Horn’s ruling 50 years ago, by posting a recording of Allen Ginsberg reading “Howl” himself, and by hosting a discussion of media censorship, forbidden words and poetry’s place in the culture of repression with Ferlinghetti, Bob Holman, first amendment lawyer Ron Collins, Beat Generation scholar and filmmaker Regina Weinreich, and WBAI programming staff.

Your comments are welcome. What do you think?