Fragments from Howl – sadà\exposadà
who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy,
and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia,
who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia
(extract from the poem ‘Howl‘ by Allen Ginsberg. Copyright © Allen Ginsberg, 1956, 1961, used by permission of The Wylie Agency (UK) Limited)