What are similarities and differences in reading section I of Ginsberg's Howl and reading Whitman's Song of Myself?Section I of Howl may suggest...

The main difference between Ginsberg and Whitman (whom
Ginsberg respected and admitted to being influenced by) lie in the fact that Ginsberg is
much more "raw" in his expression.

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I saw the best minds of my generation
destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves
through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry
fix

Ginsberg sees a world
that is fractured and torn apart, but fighting to maintain individual identity within
that world. Whitman is more hopeful for the world and his place in
it:

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The atmosphere is not a perfume, it
has no taste of the
distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my
mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and
become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with
me.

Both Ginsberg and Whitman
cavort with the angels and become one with them. Ginsberg, through
sex:

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who let themselves be fucked in the
ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,

who blew and were
blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean
love,

Whitman celebrates the
connection between God and love, but less openly as a sexual
act:

And I
know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the
spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are
also my brothers, and the women

my sisters and lovers,

And that a kelson of the creation is
love,

Both poets, however,
celebrate identity and openly celebrate and embrace both heterosexual and homosexual
love in their poems and in themselves. While Whitman's work is more hopeful, more filled
with the adoration of the beauty of nature, Ginsberg is more raw and less given to paint
the world around him in bright hues.