The critical tradition surrounding “Howl” tends to identify Ginsberg as the poem's speaker. Although literary critics often maintain a distinction between poet and speaker, in the case of “Howl,” the conflation seems well justified. For one thing, in addition to dedicating the poem to his friend Carl Solomon, the speaker directly addresses Solomon throughout the poem, most notably in part 3. The prominence of this is enough for many critics to claim that the poem’s speaker is Ginsberg himself. Yet there is further evidence to justify this claim. Indeed, the poem includes numerous other references to Ginsberg’s life and experience. Aside from Solomon, the speaker also mentions his mother, who spent the final years of her life in a psychiatric center called Greystone. The speaker mentions Greystone in line 70, and he describes his mother’s psychosis in line 71. The speaker also describes the specific offence that got Ginsberg expelled from Columbia University (line 7):

   who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull

These and other references provide ample evidence to support the claim that Ginsberg is the speaker of “Howl.”

Whether or not we think of the speaker as Ginsberg himself, it’s worth noting the characteristics that define the speaker. Perhaps most important is the speaker’s evident respect for countercultural values. Indeed, he makes many references to sexual liberation and drug use. Most scandalous at the time of publication were the explicit references to gay sex between men. The speaker makes all these references in a celebratory tone, demonstrating a motivation to resist the restrictive morality of mainstream American society. The resistance to mainstream norms can also be detected in the speaker’s fascination with mysticism. Whether through psychedelic-induced hallucination or Jewish mystic practices like Kabbalah, the speaker pursues higher levels of meaning and truth. Yet for all that the speaker seeks liberation from the constraints of the status quo, it’s clear from the outset that mainstream morality is winning the battle. The dominance of mainstream social values has contributed greatly to the decay of the American imagination, which the speaker announces at the poem’s very beginning: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed” (line 1). Thus, despite his strident countercultural spirit, the speaker is also deeply distraught by the challenge to the values he and his community hold dear.