Allen Ginsberg

Author profile

born

June 03, 1926 in Newark, New Jersey, The United States

died

April 05, 1997

gender

male

website

http://www.allenginsberg.org/

genre

Poetry

About this author

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Irwin Allen Ginsberg was the son of Louis and Naomi Ginsberg, two Jewish members of the New York literary counter-culture of the 1920s. Ginsberg was raised among several progressive political perspectives. A supporter of the Communist party, Ginsberg's mother was a nudist whose mental health was a concern throughout the poet's childhood. According to biographer Barry Miles, "Naomi's illness gave Allen an enormous empathy and tolerance for madness, neurosis, and psychosis."

As an adolescent, Ginsberg savored Walt Whitman, though in 1939, when Ginsberg graduated high school, he considered Edgar Allan Poe his favorite poet. Eager to follow a childhood hero who had received a scholarship to Columbia University, Ginsberg made a vow that if he got...more Irwin Allen Ginsberg was the son of Louis and Naomi Ginsberg, two Jewish members of the New York literary counter-culture of the 1920s. Ginsberg was raised among several progressive political perspectives. A supporter of the Communist party, Ginsberg's mother was a nudist whose mental health was a concern throughout the poet's childhood. According to biographer Barry Miles, "Naomi's illness gave Allen an enormous empathy and tolerance for madness, neurosis, and psychosis."

As an adolescent, Ginsberg savored Walt Whitman, though in 1939, when Ginsberg graduated high school, he considered Edgar Allan Poe his favorite poet. Eager to follow a childhood hero who had received a scholarship to Columbia University, Ginsberg made a vow that if he got into the school he would devote his life to helping the working class, a cause he took seriously over the course of the next several years.

He was admitted to Columbia University, and as a student there in the 1940s, he began close friendships with William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and Jack Kerouac, all of whom later became leading figures of the Beat movement. The group led Ginsberg to a "New Vision," which he defined in his journal: "Since art is merely and ultimately self-expressive, we conclude that the fullest art, the most individual, uninfluenced, unrepressed, uninhibited expression of art is true expression and the true art."

Around this time, Ginsberg also had what he referred to as his "Blake vision," an auditory hallucination of William Blake reading his poems "Ah Sunflower," "The Sick Rose," and "Little Girl Lost." Ginsberg noted the occurrence several times as a pivotal moment for him in his comprehension of the universe, affecting fundamental beliefs about his life and his work. While Ginsberg claimed that no drugs were involved, he later stated that he used various drugs in an attempt to recapture the feelings inspired by the vision.

In 1954, Ginsberg moved to San Francisco. His mentor, William Carlos Williams, introduced him to key figures in the San Francisco poetry scene, including Kenneth Rexroth. He also met Michael McClure, who handed off the duties of curating a reading for the newly-established "6" Gallery. With the help of Rexroth, the result was "The '6' Gallery Reading" which took place on October 7, 1955. The event has been hailed as the birth of the Beat Generation, in no small part because it was also the first public reading of Ginsberg's "Howl," a poem which garnered world-wide attention for him and the poets he associated with.

Shortly after Howl and Other Poems was published in 1956 by City Lights Bookstore, it was banned for obscenity. The work overcame censorship trials, however, and became one of the most widely read poems of the century, translated into more than twenty-two languages.

In the 1960s and 70s, Ginsberg studied under gurus and Zen masters. As the leading icon of the Beats, Ginsberg was involved in countless political activities, including protests against the Vietnam War, and he spoke openly about issues that concerned him, such as free speech and gay rights agendas.

Ginsberg went on publish numerous collections of poetry, including Kaddish and Other Poems (1961), Planet News (1968), and The Fall of America: Poems of These States (1973), which won the National Book Award.

In 1993, Ginsberg received the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (the Order of Arts and Letters) from the French Minister of Culture. He also co-founded and directed the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Colorado. In his later years, Ginsberg became a Distinguished Professor at Brooklyn College.

On April 5, 1997, in New York City, he died from complications of hepatitis.(less)

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Books by Allen Ginsberg

Average rating: 4.04 · 41,554 ratings · 1,393 reviews · 153 distinct works

	Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg, William Carlos Williams (introduction) 4.18 avg rating — 17,386 ratings — published 1956 — 12 editions	My rating:
	Kaddish and Other Poems 4.21 avg rating — 2,068 ratings — published 1961 — 3 editions	My rating:
	Collected Poems, 1947-1980 4.16 avg rating — 1,900 ratings — published 1984 — 6 editions	My rating:
	Howl: Original Draft Facsimile by Allen Ginsberg, Barry Miles 4.17 avg rating — 1,039 ratings — published 1956 — 9 editions	My rating:
	Collected Poems, 1947-1997 4.38 avg rating — 664 ratings — published 1984 — 6 editions	My rating:
	Reality Sandwiches 4.02 avg rating — 532 ratings — published 1963 — 3 editions	My rating:
	The Fall of America 4.03 avg rating — 401 ratings — published 1972 — 3 editions	My rating:
	Selected Poems, 1947-1995 4.13 avg rating — 286 ratings — published 1996 — 6 editions	My rating:
	Death and Fame: Last Poems, 1993-1997 3.79 avg rating — 209 ratings — 4 editions	My rating:
	Planet News 4.08 avg rating — 185 ratings — published 1968 — 2 editions	My rating:

More books by Allen Ginsberg…

Quotes by Allen Ginsberg

“Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness.”
― Allen Ginsberg

tags: be-yourself , self-expression

395 people liked it

“The weight of the world is love.
Under the burden of solitude,
under the burden of dissatisfaction
the weight,the weight we carry is love. ”
― Allen Ginsberg

175 people liked it

“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 angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night.”
― Allen Ginsberg

tags: famous

168 people liked it

See all Allen Ginsberg's quotes »

Polls

Who is your favorite poet? (add to this list if needed)

Charles Bukowski

40 votes, 14.5%

E. E. Cummings

23 votes, 8.4%

Edgar Allan Poe (write-in)

21 votes, 7.6%

Emily Dickinson

16 votes, 5.8%

Robert Frost (write-in)

15 votes, 5.5%

Sylvia Plath (write-in)

14 votes, 5.1%

Pablo Neruda (write-in)

11 votes, 4.0%

Langston Hughes

8 votes, 2.9%

Mary Oliver

7 votes, 2.5%

Walt Whitman (write-in)

7 votes, 2.5%

Allen Ginsberg

7 votes, 2.5%

william shakespear (write-in)

6 votes, 2.2%

Rumi (write-in)

6 votes, 2.2%

Rainer Maria Rilke (write-in)

5 votes, 1.8%

T.S. Elliot (write-in)

5 votes, 1.8%

William Blake (write-in)

4 votes, 1.5%

Fernando Pessoa (write-in)

4 votes, 1.5%

Dante (write-in)

4 votes, 1.5%

Lord Alfred Tennyson (write-in)

4 votes, 1.5%

D. H. Lawrence (write-in)

4 votes, 1.5%

Dorothy Parker (write-in)

4 votes, 1.5%

John Keats (write-in)

3 votes, 1.1%

Federico García Lorca (write-in)

3 votes, 1.1%

Charles Baudelaire (write-in)

3 votes, 1.1%

anne sexton (write-in)

3 votes, 1.1%

Nikki Giovanni

3 votes, 1.1%

Seamus Heaney (write-in)

2 votes, 0.7%

FERLINGHETTI, Lawrence

2 votes, 0.7%

Hart Crane (write-in)

2 votes, 0.7%

Dylan Thomas (write-in)

2 votes, 0.7%

Andrea Gibson (write-in)

2 votes, 0.7%

John Donne (write-in)

2 votes, 0.7%

Wallace Stevens (write-in)

2 votes, 0.7%

Sherman Alexie

2 votes, 0.7%

Adrienne Rich

2 votes, 0.7%

Ted Hughes (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Naomi Shihab Nye

1 vote, 0.4%

Stephen Crane (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Jack Kerouac (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Ellen Hopkins (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Lewis Carroll (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Li Young Lee

1 vote, 0.4%

Geoffrey Chaucer (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Al Berto (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Audre Lorde

1 vote, 0.4%

Dmitry Prigov (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Wisława Szymborska (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Mark Doty (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Mario Benedetti (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Percy Shelley (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Arthur Rimbaud (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Suheir Hammad (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

E.E. Cummings (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Hiroyuki Nishigaki (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Gwendolyn Brooks (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Philip Levine (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Rafał Wojaczek (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Gérard de Nerval (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

A. Kamalei (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Marge Piercy (Author)

1 vote, 0.4%

cesar vallejo (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Alexander Pope (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Stephen Dunn

0 votes, 0.0%

Martin Espada

0 votes, 0.0%

275 total votes

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Allen Ginsberg

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Books by Allen Ginsberg