He claims that the “best minds” did nothing wrong, but it is only that they did nothing wrong in their own minds. Ginsberg claims that they were violent in their resistance, attacking the police and resisting arrest. Lines 79-81 remind the reader of the resistance to authority that the “best minds” exhibited. Ginsberg later said that 'Howl' came from a deep place of consciousness and that he only wanted to write what came naturally from his mind. 'Howl' exemplifies this technique with the absence of formed stanza's and lines. They rejected standard form and rhythm and embraced the syncopated rhythms and improvisational styles of jazz.

This is exactly where the term 'Beat poets' came from. Jazz music as it was played in the backroom clubs in seedy and unruly parts of San Francisco thus became a kind of beat that Ginsberg and his friends would try and emulate in their work. Though the Beats could never fully participate in the suffering of racism because almost all the Beats were white and from that middle or working class that they rejected, they also felt rejected by the same society that rejected African-Americans. In many places there were treated as second class citizens. African-Americans were not accepted into the institutions of society - schools, government, or business. It was a culture that was not accepted by white mainstream America. Here, writing of some of the crazy and debauched acts of his friend Neal Cassady, Ginsberg tells the reader that Cassady 'leaped on negroes.' The line works in two ways because it tells of an actual event in Cassady's life, but it also represents the way in which the Beat poets leaped into African-American culture of the day. The use of African-American culture, especially jazz music, is a crucial point of 'Howl.' Ginsberg references it in the first lines of the Part I, writing of the 'Negro' streets.

It is a documentary style of poetry, taking scenes and snippets from Ginsberg's own life and interweaving them with incidents of insanity and anarchy from the lives of his friends. The second half of Part I continues with many of the themes of the earlier lives.

Ginsberg poems howl