First Day of National Poetry Month

It's April, which means that it is National Poetry Month. Long before I became a novelist, I was a poet, and that has never left me. I don't wait for April to roll along to read or write poetry, but this does seem like a good time to write about it.
The best way to start is with my favorite poet. Since I first read the opening lines of Howl, I've been a fan of Allen Ginsberg. It was not my first exposure to the Beat movement, but it was my first exposure to Beat poetry. It was nothing like what I thought poetry was - missing were couplets and iambic pentameter, missing were short simple statements, missing were obvious references to love and/or nature. In their place was this massive, run-on, jumbled up, be-bop rhapsody. Ginsberg had his finger on the pulse of something big and real and most importantly something that other poets never talked about. Long before I ever smoked myself high with marijuana or even drank as a red wine jug-holding bikkhu, Ginsberg blew my mind.
That opening line - "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked," sets quite a bar. My first thought was and still is, 'what is it like to be part of a group that includes the best minds of a generation?'. Now that this has been a part of my life for more than 25 years, I have more thoughts on it, about it, of it. Have I seen any of the best minds of my generation? I certainly have seen good minds destroyed by madness, some which reformed in new and beautiful ways, and some that never came back. Did Ginsberg really think at the time that he was seeing the best minds of a generation, or was he speaking in a more hyperbolic way as I do. If he did mean it as applied to his friends how did he feel about the fact that some of them likely were the best minds of his generation? What does he mean by madness? I've always taken it to be both literal and a metaphor for drug usage gone too far.
A great experience is hearing Allen Ginsberg read Howl. Once he gets worked up to it, his delivery becomes absolutely captivating.
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If you haven't read Howl, or would like to read along while listening to the above presentation, you can find the full text of Howl here.