Tortured by the paranoia and mental illness of his immigrant mother, and by his own homosexuality in a society that was homophobic, Allen Ginsberg's early work was as much a measure of his self-loathing as his detestation of social hypocrisy and injustice. His poems reached depths of humiliation and shame that presaged a mental breakdown, followed by recovery with the help of Buddhist philosophy. Ginsberg's political commitment was fired by his involvement with Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder and others in the Beat movement, a poetry of social protest that refused perceived elitist boundaries. Despite a tendency toward propaganda, Ginsberg's best poetry is infused with satiric comedy and cheerful self-parody, and is most readily appreciated when read aloud.


The New Yorker, Helen Vendler
Ginsberg, at his best, is alert, unprogrammed, free.



"Both an American publishing landmark and an immediate classic of international importance."


About the Author
Allen Ginsberg was born in 1926 in Newark, New Jersey, a son of Naomi Ginsberg and lyric poet Louis Ginsberg. In 1956 he published his signal poem, "Howl," one of the most widely read and translated poems of the century. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, awarded the medal of Chevalier de I'Ordes des Arts et Lettres by the French Minister of Culture ion 1993, and cofounder of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Institute, the first accredited Buddhist college in the Western world, Allen Ginsberg died in 1997.

ANNOTATION

"...both tragic and dynamic, a lyrical genius, con-man extraordinaire and probably the single greatest influence on American political voice since Walt Whitman."--Bob Dylan

FROM THE PUBLISHER