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American poet Allen Ginsberg passed away in 1997, but the memory of his experimental and controversial work lives on every year at the Howl! Festival in the East Village's Tompkins Square Park. The event takes its name from Ginsberg's three-part 1956 poem "Howl"—a controlled chaos of complex modifiers and proper nouns that prompted an obscenity trial for its ample drug references and frank portrayals of homosexuality. Ginsberg and his publisher won that trial, and the poem went on to become a defining force of the Beat Generation.

His scat-like rhythms in "Howl," which was initially conceived of as a spoken-word performance piece, are thought to mimic the sounds of that era's jazz musicians. "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness," he says in the first line of the poem, which details the experiences of fellow Beats—including Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs and Lucien Carr, whom he met at Columbia University—throughout the country and specifically New York City. On September 4, listen for references to the Bronx, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Staten Island Ferry (where Ginsberg often accompanied Kerouac for evening walks at the wharf) at the annual "Howl" reading that kicks off the three-day festival (this event will take place at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery at Second Avenue and East 10th Street). Also mentioned in the poem is Bellevue Hospital, where Ginsberg was briefly committed in 1949 after police discovered goods a drug-addict friend had been storing at his Morningside Heights apartment (Ginsberg pleaded insanity). The poet ended up dedicating "Howl" to another patient he met at the psychiatric hospital, Carl Solomon.

The "best minds," according to the poem, were "yacketayakking" about "shocks of hospitals and jails and wars" not just at Bellevue, but also at the bar. "Howl" directly mentions both Fugazzi's and Bickford's, two watering holes that are now closed. Although not cited in the poem, you can visit some of the Beats' other preferred spots for guzzling "stale beer" in Greenwich Village: White Horse Tavern and the newly renovated Minetta Tavern on MacDougal Street—the street that used to be home to fellow Beat hotspots Kettle of Fish (which has since relocated twice) and the now closed Gaslight Cafe.

If the "Howl" reading is a bit too racy for your little poets of tomorrow, bring them to the park for Howl! Kids, September 5–6, for arts and crafts, puppet shows and more. Music fans can check out Hip-Hop Howl! on September 5 and Howlucination! on September 6 (this one's not recommended for kids). For more information on the festival's events, visit howlfestival.com. And, of course, don't forget to pay your beatnik respects at the Samuel Cox statue in Tompkins Square Park, which looms above Kerouac's head in a famous picture Ginsberg took of the On the Road author while the two were walking on East 7th Street in 1953.