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Allen Ginsberg

Bio

Allen Ginsberg was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1926. As a Columbia College student in the 1940s he began close friendships with William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso and Jack Kerouac. He became associated with the Beat movement and the 1950s San Francisco Renaissance poets Gary Snyder and Michael McClure. After jobs as a labourer, market researcher and sailor, Ginsberg published his first volume, Howl and Other Poems, in 1956. Howl overcame censorship trials to become one of the most widely read poems of the century, translated into twenty-eight languages. In 1965 Ginsberg was, in a matter of weeks, crowned Prague May King, expelled by the Czech police and placed on the FBI's Dangerous Security list. Though he travelled widely, teaching in India, China, and Western and Eastern Europe, his home for most of his life was New York's Lower East Side. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Allen Ginsberg was awarded the medal of Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the French Minister of Culture in 1993, honoured as Harvard Phi Beta Kappa Poet 1994 and co-founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute, the first accredited Buddhist college in the western world. Ginsberg died in New York on 5 April 1997, eight days after being diagnosed seriously ill.

Allen Ginsberg Books

Howl and Other Poems book cover

Howl and Other Poems

Allen Ginsberg
Don't Hide the Madness book cover

Don't Hide the Madness

William S. Burroughs
The Best Minds of My Generation book cover

The Best Minds of My Generation

Allen Ginsberg
Wait Till I'm Dead book cover

Wait Till I'm Dead

Allen Ginsberg
Howl, and Other Poems book cover

Howl, and Other Poems

Allen Ginsberg
The Essential Ginsberg book cover

The Essential Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg
Kerouac book cover

Kerouac

Ann Charters
Collected Poems 1947–1997 book cover

Collected Poems 1947–1997

Allen Ginsberg
Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg book cover

Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg

Jack Kerouac
The Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, 1956-1991 book cover

The Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, 1956-1991

Bill Morgan
The Letters of Allen Ginsberg book cover

The Letters of Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg
Journals book cover

Journals

Allen Ginsberg
Indian Journals book cover

Indian Journals

Allen Ginsberg
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