Are You Obscene?

In 1957, Allen Ginsberg’s poem HOWL was put on trial because “the words and the sense of the writing is obscene.” 500 copies of the book were seized and a landmark obscenity trial followed. Today, over 1 million copies of HOWL have been published and the poem is widely considered a landmark in 20th century literature.

Everyone has a different opinion about what’s obscene.