Allen Ginsberg

Born in 1926, Allen Ginsberg grew up in Paterson, New Jersey, the town immortalized in his mentor William Carlos Williams' epic poem. Ginsberg was a wild soul from the outset. As one biographer wrote, "He was from a family of Jewish Russian immigrants, his family had ties to the radical labor movement, his mother was insane, and he was a homosexual: four prescriptions in the conventional 1940s and 1950s for a sense of deep alienation."

While attending Columbia, Ginsberg hooked up with a bohemian circle of friends including Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and William S. Burroughs, who shared enthusiasms for literature, philosophy, drugs, sex and petty crime and who formed the core of the literary Beat movement. In the 1950s, Ginsberg relocated to San Francisco and joined its vibrant community of writers, artists and assorted hipsters. In a now famous 1955 poetry reading, he performed his most famous work, "Howl," with its famous opening line, "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked." The publication of Howl and Other Poems and a high-profile, unsuccessful obscenity trial made Ginsberg famous as both a poet and a counterculture icon.

Unlike Kerouac, who retreated from the limelight and came to despise the 1960s generation, Ginsberg cultivated his outsider celebrity and became a ubiquitous figure in American radicalism. He travelled the world, often with his lifelong partner Peter Orlovsky, meeting with writers, artists, activists and world leaders. He embraced Buddhism, protested the persecution of homosexuals in both capitalist and communist countries, experimented with psychedelic drugs, led anti-war protests, helped organize the 1967 Human Be-In, befriended and collaborated with rock stars (Bob Dylan, The Clash), and of course, continued to write and perform poetry. To all these activities he brought a sense of fun, freedom, sensuality and spirituality. Ginsberg died of liver cancer on April 5, 1997.

In the tradition of Walt Whitman, Ginsberg's verse celebrated sexual pleasure as a liberating force for humanity. As Camille Paglia wrote after Ginsberg's death, "Allen Ginsberg was the apostle of a truly visionary sexuality. Like the expansive, sensual, democratic Whitman but unlike the twisted, dishonest, pretentious Foucault, he saw the continuity between great nature and the human body, bathed in waves of cosmic energy." From "Who Be Kind To" (in Planet News):

I want the orgy of our flesh, orgy
     of all eyes happy, orgy of the soul
     kissing and blessing its mortal-grown
     body,
orgy of tenderness beneath the neck, orgy of
     kindness to thigh and vagina
Desire given with meat hand
     and cock, desire taken with
     mouth and ass, desire returned
     to the last sigh!

MAJOR SITES

The wonderful Literary Kicks features a biography of Allen Ginsberg by Levi Asher, aka "brooklyn"; an exhaustive, well-organized bibliography of Allen Ginsberg's works divided by genre; and a bibliography of works about Ginsberg. Asher also contributes fine, quotation-rich essays on Ginsberg's famous poems "Howl" and "Kaddish." This site has lots more material on the Beat Generation, so follow links and browse around.
Literary Kicks

INTERVIEWS

Gloria Brame interviewed Allen Ginsberg in 1996 about sexual freedom, censorship and contemporary poetry. Well worth reading despite the annoying white-text-against-psychedelic-orange-background formatting.
Eclectic Literary Forum

Harvey Blume interviews Allen Ginsberg about love, meditation, dreams, the canon and more.
Boston Book Review

In this 1996 interview, Allen Ginsberg talks about the cultural climate of the Cold War and its influence on his life and art.
National Security Archive

Steve Silberman interviewed Allen Ginsberg for Wired in 1996. Silberman also gave Ginsberg his first encounter with the World Wide Web, browsing and searching for sites about Ginsberg and the Beats, to which Ginsberg replied, "Thank God I don't know how to work this."
Wired

ARTICLES

Herbert Gold remembers Allen Ginsberg after his death in 1997. "Like Jerry Garcia and Timothy Leary, other icons of the counterculture recently ushered by Brother Death into the wings, Allen was a charmer and a trickster. He was a tireless organizer, traveler, funmaker." Four Ginsberg poems accompany Gold's tribute, including This Form of Life Needs Sex.
Salon

Camille Paglia pays tribute to Allen Ginsberg's greatness as a poet, visionary and profound influence on a generation's intellectual adventures.
Salon

James Atlas reviewed Allen Ginsberg's career in Atlantic Monthlyin 1984 upon the publication of Collected Poems, 1947-1980. "Chaotic and hectoring, the long, Whitmanesque lines unfurl in apparent metrical anarchy, but no one who has ever heard Ginsberg read would call his prosody random. He has clearly served a rigorous apprenticeship, as the early imitations of Marvell and Donne (included in the appendix) demonstrate, and the long line he adopted in the 1950s exerts a hypnotic force. Poetry derives from oral literature; it was meant to be recited and sung. Ginsberg restores its original intent."
Atlantic Monthly

Jesse Monteagudo pays tribute to the Beat Generation after the recent deaths of William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Herbert Huncke.
Bad Puppy

Lloyd Schwartz reflects on the life and work of Allen Ginsberg, "one of America's great poets."
Boston Phoenix

Tom Erikson discusses Allen Ginsberg's participation in the 1993 summer writing program at the Naropa Institute's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. Erikson also posts six photographs of Allen Ginsberg taken that summer at the Naropa Institute.
Booksmith

Herbert Mitgang reviews the history of US government repression against Allen Ginsberg, from his book Dangerous dossiers : exposing the secret war against America's greatest authors .
Al Filreis

WRITINGS

Poets.org features a biography of Allen Ginsberg, an extensive bibliography, text versions of Howl and Kaddish, and a RealAudio recording of Ginsberg reading A Supermarket in California.
Poets.org

Rooknet has a short biographical profile of Ginsberg along with six poems from Howl.
Rooknet

Allen Ginsberg celebrated "the actual experience of the smoked herb" and denounced 1960s anti-drug propaganda in his classic article, "The Great Marijuana Hoax."
Marijuana Uses