Born and bred in New Jersey, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Ginsberg first became involved in the city s bohemian scene in the late 1940s, experimenting with a vast array of narcotic substances and coming into contact with a number of artists and writers, including William Burroughs (with whom he had a brief homosexual relationship) and Jack Kerouac. He was a tireless champion of their work, acting as unofficial literary agent for Kerouac s seminal On The Road and editing Burroughs junky classic The Naked Lunch. Collectively, he and many of the writers he befriended became known as the Beat Generation (a phrase coined by Kerouac).
He first came to prominence with the publication of his controversial poem Howl in 1956. His publisher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Books, was unsuccessfully tried for obscenity, something which immediately established him as a major player on the literary scene and his book as an essential bible for disaffected beatnik youth. Its oft-quoted opening passage remains among the most memorable in post-war American poetry: I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked/Dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn/Looking for an active fix.
With these lines, Ginsberg was seen to have liberated poetry from the clutches of dry, humourless academics and totally revitalised the medium. Inspired by the rhythms and improvisations of American jazz, Beat poetry had a kind of dramatic immediacy that made it particularly well suited to live performance. Throughout his life, Ginsberg gave countless poetry readings around the globe, including two in Ireland the first in Dublin in 1993, the second at Galway s Cuirt Festival Of Literature in 1995 (where he also survived a Hot Press interview). His last reading in Europe was at the London Poetry Olympics in the Royal Festival Hall in 1996, where he performed Howl and accompanied a reading by Paul McCartney on harmonium. He had recently recorded a track called The Ballad Of The Skeletons with McCartney, Philip Glass and Lenny Kaye of the Patti Smith Group.
Other bands he collaborated with over the years included Sonic Youth, The Clash, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and U2. It was mainly through such collaborations that he managed to remain relevant as a counterculture icon, for over four decades.
heart problems
During the 1960s, Ginsberg travelled extensively, studying Buddhism in India, visiting Ezra Pound in Italy and accompanying Bob Dylan on his Don t Look Back tour in the UK. In 1965 he was expelled from Cuba following his criticisms of the Castro government for its repression of homosexuals. In San Francisco he was very involved with the hippy movement, campaigning for the legalisation of drugs and organising numerous anti-war protests and be-ins mass outdoor festivals of music, mescaline and meditation. He was a close friend of LSD guru Timothy Leary.
In the early 1970s Ginsberg was instrumental in setting up the western world s first fully accredited Buddhist college, the Naropa Institute in Colorado, where he taught poetry. When not touring he divided much of his time over the last twenty years between New York and Naropa.
Although he had been sick for some time, contracting Bell s Palsy in the 1970s and suffering from diabetes and heart problems in later years, his cancer had been kept a closely guarded secret, shared only by his closest friends, including fellow Beat writers William S. Burroughs and Gary Snyder, and his long-term lover, Peter Orlovsky.
On 4th April it was publicly announced that he had less than a year to live. Unfortunately, the man who once proudly boasted I have achieved the introduction of the word fuck into texts inevitably studied by schoolboys actually had less than 24 hours of life left.
Although he never won a major literary prize, his work 11 books of poetry and numerous volumes of letters and journals is now considered mainstream and is studied internationally. In 1986 he became a professor at Brooklyn College, finally achieving the academic respectability that had eluded him for so long. Stamford University bought his archives in 1994 for an undisclosed sum. Much of his money was donated to a charity he had set up for struggling poets.
His death made headline news around the globe, a rarity for any poet. But Allen Ginsberg was more than just a poet. The original rebel with a cause, he was a true American icon and will always be remembered as such.
Olaf Tyaransen