American poet and diarist, highly visible with Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs in the beat generation literary movement, that burst into prominence in the 1950s. Ginsberg's poem THE HOWL is considered to be one of the most significant products of that movement.

Ginsberg was born in Newark, New Jersey. His father was a poet and teacher. During Ginsberg's childhood his mother started to suffer from paranoia. She was institutionalised, lobotomised and died in an asylum in 1956. Her life has the subject of Ginsberg's poem 'Kaddish', which is considered among his greatest achievements.

During Deppression era the family lived in Paterson, where Ginsberg found the poems of Walt Whitman. He graduated from public high school and decided to study law. Ginsberg won a scholarship to Columbia University, where he changed his major to English. His studied started well: he became a start student and gained also fame in the off-campus underground, making friends with Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs.

In the aftermath of a murder investigation, in which Ginsberg's friend and fellow student Lucien Carr was convicted, Ginsberg was ordered to undergo psychiatric counselling. He was suspended from the university for a year. Before graduating in 1948 Ginsberg worked as a welder in the Brooklyn naval yards, as a diswasher in Tames Square, night porter, and a copy boy.

Ginsberg's troubles with the law continued. His flatmate, writer Herbert Hunche, used the house as a repository for stolen goods. They were arrested after a car chase. Ginsberg pleaded insanity - he had heard a disembodied voice reciting Blake - and he spent then eight months at the Columbia Psychiatric Institute. There was also Carl Solomon, a disciple of Artaud, whom he dedicated later the Howl. Ginsberg returned to Paterson, where he met the writer William Carlos Williams.

Before devoting himself entirely to poetry Ginsberg worked for a short time for Newsweek, he was a market research consultant in New York and San Francisco (1951-53). In 1955 he gained immediate fame at a poetry reading hosted by Kenneth Rexroth. where he read the Howl .The poem was printed next year with a foreword by Williams. The police seized the entirely printing on the grounds of obscenity: Ginsberg's loudly declared homosexuality was explicitly expressed in the book. The matter went to trial and Ginsburg used his fame in the publication of Kerouac's On the Road (1957) and Burrough's The Naked Lunch (1959).

Ginsberg started to travel widely both at home and abroad, reading poems, experimenting with hallucinogens and campaigning for the liberation of American anti-drug laws. Trips to the far East and India with his lover Peter Orlovsky inspired the collection THE CHANGE (1963). In the 1960s Ginsberg was one of the central characters of the counter-culture. He lectured at universities, opposed the Vietnam War and was arrrested in the riots during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Cuba deported his after he protested at the regiment's treatment of homosexuals and the sudents of Prague elected him 'The King of May' - he was then deported by the Czech authorities.

In the 1970s Ginsberg was jailed for his part in an anti-Nixon protest, he toured with Bob Dylan and campaigned on ecological issues. He wrote 'Plutonium Ode' to be read aloud at a public demonstration in Colorado and was arrested again. In the 1980s he opposed Reagan's covert policies in Nicaragua, and worked as a vititing professor at Columbia (1986-87) and taught at Brooklyn College. His 800-page COLLECTED POEMS 1947-1980 was published in 1984.

Ginsberg's turning to Buddhism has affected deeply his poetry and world view. Hi collections in the 1960s include KADDISH AND OTHER POEMS (1961), REALITY SANDWICHES (1963), PLANET NEWS (1964). In the 1970s appeared THE FALL OF AMERICA (1972), FIRST BLUES (1975), POEMS ALL OVER THE PLACE (1978). Some of his talks on poetry and politics are included in ALLEN VERBATIM (1974). JOURNALS, EARLY FIFTIES EARLY SIXTIES was published in 1977. SELECTED GAY POEMS ANN CORRESPONDENCE, a collection of poems and letters, exchanged between Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky, appeared in 1978.

Howl is a long, free-verse poem, reminiscent of Walt Whitman. It exemplifies Ginsberg's poetics of spontaneous composition with attention paid to the natural wanderings of the mind and the rhythms of breathing. It became one of the symbols of the liberation of American culture in the 1950s from an academic formalism and political conservatrism. Influenced by the mysticism and poetics of Blake, Howl celebrated and lamented with the nuances from the Old Testament the casualties of Truman's and Eisenhower's America, and in particular the lives of bohemians who were indetified by John Clellon Holmes and the Beat Generation.

For further reading: Allen Ginsberg in the Sixties by E. Mottram (1972); Naked Angels by J. Tytell (1976); Allen Ginsberg by Barry Miles (1989)

Selcted works:

• THE HOWL AND OTHER POEMS, 1956
• SIESTA IN XBALBA AND RETURN TO THE STATES, 1956
• KADDISH AND OTHER POEMS, 1961
• EMPTY MIRROR, 1961
• THE YAGE LETTERS (with William Burroughs), 1963
• THE CHANGE, 1963
• THE YAGE LETTERS, 1963
• REALITY SANDWICHES, 1963
• A STRANGE NEW COTTAGE IN BERKLEY, 1963
• KRAL MAJALES, 1965
• MYSTERY IN THE UNIVERSE, 1965 (ed. E. Lucie-Smith)
• WICHITA VORTEX SUTRA, 1966
• TV BABY POEMS, 1967
• ANKOR WAT, 1968
• MESSAGE II, 1968
• AIRPLANE DREAMS, 1968
• PLANET NEWS, 1968
• SCRAP LEAVES, HASTY SCRIBBLES, 1968
• WASLES - A VISITATION, 1968
• DON'T GO AWAY MAD, 1968 (publ. Pardon Me, Sir, But My Is Eye Hurting Your Elbow?
• THE MOMENTS RETURN, 1970
• INDIAN JOURNALS, 1970
• NOTES AFTER AN EVENING WITH WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS, 1970
• DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE FOR DR TIMOTHY LEARY, 1971
• IMPROVISED POETICS, 1972
• THE FALL OFA AMERICA, 1972
• KADDISH, 1972
• THE GATES OF WRATH, 1972
• IRON HORSE, 1972
• NEW YEAR BLUES, 1972
• OPEN HEAD, 1972
• THE FALL OF AMERICA: POEMS OF THESE STATES, 1973
• ALLEN VERBATIM, 1974
• THE VISION OF THE GREAT REMEMBER, 1974
• CHICAGO TRIAL TESTIMONY OF ALLEN GINSBERG, 1975
• FIRST BLUES, 1975
• SAD DUST GLORIES, 1975
• TO EBERHART FROM GINSBERG, 1976
• AS EVER: THE COLLECTED CORRESPONDENCE OF ALLEN GINSBERG AND NEAL CASSIDY, 1977 (ed. B. Gifford)
• JOURNALS, 1977
• MIND BRATHS, 1978
• MISTLY SITTING HAIKU, 1978
• ALL OVER THE PLACE, 1978
• COMPOSED ON THE TONGUE, 1980
• STRAIGHT HEARTS DELIGHT, 1980
• PLUTONIUM ODE, 1982
• COLLECTED POEMS, 1984
• MANY LOVES, 1984
• OLD LOVE STORY, 1984
• WHITE SHROUD, 1986
• THE HYDROGEN JUKEBOX, 1990
• COSMOPOLITAN GREETINGS, 1994