Allen Ginsberg

Dynamic, confrontational language and heartbreaking anguish suffuse much of the early and best writing of New Jersey-born poet Allen Ginsberg. Close brushes with insanity, incarceration, and suicide are reflected in Howl; guilt over his mother's blighted life, medical maltreatment, and eventual death are addressed in Kaddish. Yet from this suffering, American culture was radically altered. The emotionally naked, bulldozing power of Howl was enough to overturn charges of obscenity put to it in a landmark trial, and helped pave the way for notions of personal, political, and sexual liberation to enter mainstream American culture. Ginsberg's long, musically inspired "mind breath" lines mirror those of his muse Walt Whitman, and both capture a distinctly American, ruminative perspective. However, Ginsberg's prodigious output rarely strayed beyond this style and, ironically, became a kind of limitation, making much of his later work, from Planet News of 1971 and beyond, feel predictably self-referential. But poetry was only one of his many pursuits. A generous collaborator, a committed activist and advocate, Ginsberg fought injustice on anti-war and gay rights fronts, and probably got himself arrested more times than any other artist of his stature. A relentless, revolutionary force in the history of poetry, this peace-loving man whom we have to thank for the term "flower power" devoted his life to not just opening doors but tearing down walls and expanding minds.