Irwin Allen Ginsberg (1926-06-03)June 3, 1926 Newark, New Jersey, U.S.
Died
April 5, 1997(1997-04-05) (aged 70) New York City, U.S.
Occupation
Writer, poet
Education
Montclair State University Columbia University (BA) University of California, Berkeley
Literary movement
Beat literature Confessional poetry
Notable awards
National Book Award (1974) Robert Frost Medal (1986)
Partner
Peter Orlovsky (1954–1997)
Signature
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (/ˈɡɪnzbɜːrɡ/; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Generation. He vigorously opposed militarism, economic materialism, and sexual repression, and he embodied various aspects of this counterculture with his views on drugs, sex, multiculturalism, hostility to bureaucracy, and openness to Eastern religions.[1][2]
Best known for his poem "Howl", Ginsberg denounced what he saw as the destructive forces of capitalism and conformity in the United States.[3][4] San Francisco police and US Customs seized copies of "Howl" in 1956, and a subsequent obscenity trial in 1957 attracted widespread publicity due to the poem's language and descriptions of heterosexual and homosexual sex at a time when sodomy laws made (male) homosexual acts a crime in every state.[5][6] The poem reflected Ginsberg's own sexuality and his relationships with a number of men, including Peter Orlovsky, his lifelong partner.[7] Judge Clayton W. Horn ruled that "Howl" was not obscene, asking: "Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemisms?"[8]
Ginsberg was a Buddhist who extensively studied Eastern religious disciplines. He lived modestly, buying his clothing in second-hand stores and residing in apartments in New York City's East Village.[9] One of his most influential teachers was Tibetan Buddhist Chögyam Trungpa, the founder of the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado.[10] At Trungpa's urging, Ginsberg and poet Anne Waldman started The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics there in 1974.[11]
For decades, Ginsberg was active in political protests across a range of issues from the Vietnam War to the war on drugs.[12] His poem "September on Jessore Road" drew attention to refugees fleeing the 1971 Bangladeshi genocide, exemplifying what literary critic Helen Vendler described as Ginsberg's persistent opposition to "imperial politics" and the "persecution of the powerless".[13] His collection The Fall of America shared the annual National Book Award for Poetry in 1974.[14] In 1979, he received the National Arts Club gold medal and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.[15] He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1995 for his book Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986–1992.[16]
^"Ginsberg, Allen (1926–1997)". glbtq.com. Archived from the original on March 13, 2007. Retrieved August 9, 2015.
^Ginsberg, Allen (July 1, 2009). Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems. London: Penguin Books Ltd. p. 0. ISBN 978-0-14-119016-7.
^Ginsberg, Allen (March 20, 2001). Deliberate Prose: Selected Essays 1952–1995. New York: HarperCollins. p. xx–xxi. ISBN 978-0-06-093081-3.
^"About Allen Ginsberg". PBS. December 29, 2002.
^Jones, Derek, ed. (2015). Censorship: a world encyclopedia. Volume 1–4. Abingdon: Taylor & Francis. p. 955. ISBN 978-1-135-00400-2. OCLC 910523065.
^Collins, Ronald K. L.; Skover, David (2019). The People v. Ferlinghetti: The Fight to Publish Allen Ginsberg's Howl. Rowman & Littlefield. p. xi. ISBN 978-1-5381-2590-8.
^Kramer, Jane (1968). Allen Ginsberg in America. New York: Random House. pp. 43–46. ISBN 978-1-299-40095-5.
^de Grazia, Edward (March 2, 1993). Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius. New York: Random House. p. 338. ISBN 978-0-679-74341-5.
^"Allen Ginsberg Project – Bio". allenginsberg.org. Retrieved February 18, 2013.
^Miles 2001, pp. 440–444
^Miles 2001, pp. 454–455
^Ginsberg, Allen, Deliberate Prose, the foreword by Edward Sanders, p. xxi.
^Vendler, Helen (January 13, 1986), "Books: A Lifelong Poem Including History", The New Yorker, p. 81.
^Cite error: The named reference nba1974 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Miles 2001, p. 484
^"The Pulitzer Prizes | Poetry". Pulitzer.org. Retrieved October 31, 2010.
Irwin AllenGinsberg (/ˈɡɪnzbɜːrɡ/; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he...
experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation and exploration. AllenGinsberg's Howl (1956), William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch (1959), and Jack Kerouac's...
2010) was an American poet and actor. He was the long-time partner of AllenGinsberg. Orlovsky was born in the Lower East Side of New York City, the son...
American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and AllenGinsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Of French-Canadian ancestry,...
Louis Ginsberg (1895–1976) was an American poet and father of poet AllenGinsberg. Louis Ginsberg was born in Newark, New Jersey, on October 1, 1895,...
polarized, ranging from bold oracle to publicity hound. According to poet AllenGinsberg, he was "a hero of American consciousness", and writer Tom Robbins called...
to describe his social circle of friends and fellow writers, such as AllenGinsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Neal Cassady. Kerouac said that "beat" had...
San Francisco painting studio. Bowen's guests in the room included AllenGinsberg, Gary Snyder, Timothy Leary, and Jerry Rubin. The small group would...
See Me 2 (2016), and comedy The Lost City (2022). He also portrayed AllenGinsberg in the biopic Kill Your Darlings (2013) and "Weird Al" Yankovic in the...
the Vietnam War. The expression was coined by the American Beat poet AllenGinsberg in 1965 as a means to transform war protests into peaceful affirmative...
represented by the character Cody Pomeray. Cassady also appeared in AllenGinsberg's poems, and in several other works of literature by other writers. Cassady...
August 24, Lincoln Park was cleared almost without incident, with AllenGinsberg leading many protesters out of the park before the 11 p.m. curfew. According...
commentary against a metaphorical landscape in a style characterized by AllenGinsberg as "chains of flashing images," and "My Back Pages", which attacks the...
title began as a mistake. Reading aloud from the manuscript for Queer, AllenGinsberg misread the phrase "a leer of nakedlust wrenched" as "a leer of naked...
known as the Beats. These included: William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, AllenGinsberg, Lucien Carr, Herbert Huncke, Vickie Russell (a prostitute and addict...
of the Beat movement, such as William S. Burroughs (Old Bull Lee), AllenGinsberg (Carlo Marx), and Neal Cassady (Dean Moriarty) represented by characters...
ISBN 0-8093-2447-4, ISBN 978-0-8093-2447-7. pg. 75–79. AllenGinsberg, Lewis Hyde. On the poetry of AllenGinsberg. University of Michigan Press, 1984. ISBN 0-472-06353-7...
of the inner circle of Beat Generation writers (with Jack Kerouac, AllenGinsberg, and William S. Burroughs). Born Nunzio Corso at New York City's St...
Ring Sheldon Buckle Two Ninas Marty Sachs Body Shots Trent 2000 Beat AllenGinsberg A Rumour of Angels Uncle Charlie 2002 Buying the Cow Tyler Carter Bellows...
by Phil Ochs, Ronee Blakley, T-Bone Burnett, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, AllenGinsberg, Arlo Guthrie, Ronnie Hawkins, Roger McGuinn, Joni Mitchell, Mick Ronson...