Allen Ginsberg 1926 - 1997 |
| Irwin Allen Ginsberg was born on June 3,1926 in Beth Israel Hospital in Newark,New Jersey.He was the last child and second son of Louis and Naomi Livergant (Levy) Ginsberg. His brother, Eugene Brooks,was born in 1921. Ginsberg’s father was born in Newark in 1895 and was a graduate of Rutgers University.He was a high school English teacher and a published poet.Ginsberg’s mother,Naomi was born in western Russia in 1895.Her family then moved to the Lower East Side of New York City where they lived until moving to Newark where she attended high school. During her New York City days, she was active in the Communist Party and was dedicated to its cause throughout her life. She attended a state normal school and went on to teach. The couple was married in 1919 after a courtship of five years and after she suffered the first of several nervous breakdowns which would finally destroy the marriage and leave her instutionalized by the time of her death in 1955. Allen attended Newark’s Central High Scool and then East Side High School from which he was graduated in 1943. Despite being charged with the care of his mother, as was his brother, Ginsberg was a good if not precocious student who entered Columbia University in the following September. He wanted to be a labor lawyer. At Columbia he met an older classmate, Lucien Carr, who was from St.Louis. Carr introduced him to William Burroughs, also from St.Louis, who was a 1936 graduate of Harvard University. Then, in 1944, Ginsberg met Jack Kerouac who was a recent Columbia dropout. This group formed the basis for what would become the Beat Generation of Writers as they searched for a New Vision for writers and artistic expresson. In 1946, Ginsberg met and fell in love with Neal Cassady, who had just arrived from Denver, Colorado, with his teenage bride LuAnne Henderson. In 1947, after a stint as a merchant marine, Ginsburg headed to Denver to pursue Cassady, who, although not divorced from his first wife, was involved with Carolyn Robinson who became his second wife. Kerouac’s ON THE ROAD depicts these hectic days in Denver. While living in East Harlem in 1948, Ginsberg had a vision of the English poet, William Blake (1757-1827), reciting his poems. From this, Ginsberg said that his voice as a poet was formed. Then, in 1949, Ginsberg was arrested for allowing his apartment to be used for the storage of stolen goods. As part of a plea bargain, he was admitted to the Columbia Psychiatric Institute for eight months. There he met Carl Soloman, to whom Ginsberg dedicated "Howl," his most famous poem. During the early fifties, Ginsberg spent much of his time promoting the work of Kerouac and Burroughs. From January until June of 1954, Ginsberg traveled in Mexico. Then he lived with Neal Cassady’s family in San Jose until August when he was forced to move to San Francisco. In December he met and fell in love with his lifelong friend, Peter Orlovsky. In early August, he started to write “Howl for Carl Soloman” which he read in public for the first time on October 7,1955, at the 6 Gallery poetry reading, which he helped to organize. In the audience were Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady. The emcee was Kenneth Rexroth. Also reading were Philip Lamantia, Michael McClure, Gary Snyder, and Philip Whalen. The event launched the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance and brought together likeminded East Coast and West Coast poets. In June 1956,Ginsberg’s mother, Naomi, died in Greystone. Then, in March 1957, Ginsberg captured national attention when a second printing of “Howl” by City Lights was seized in San Fransisco by U.S.Customs officials, and the publisher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, was place on trial. Ginsberg was out of the country during the trial. During the summer, the trial created a sensation and brought the Beat Generation into national focus. On September 5, 1957, Jack Kerouac’s ON THE ROAD was released and rose to the best sellers list. On October 3,1957, Judge Clayton Horn declared “Howl” not obscene, and Ginsberg assumed the role as poet laureate of the Beat Generation and Kerouac its spokesman. During the rest of the decade, Ginsberg wrote REALITY SANDWICHES and KADDISH AND OTHER POEMS. "Kaddish,” which was published in 1961, is Ginberg's heartrending poem written as a funeral oration for his mother. Ginsberg met Timothy Leary in 1960 and joined Leary's psychedelic revolution. He also traveled to India with Peter Orlovsky where he advanced his studies in Eastern philsophy. In 1963, REALITY SANDWICHES was published by City Lights, and Ginsberg received a Guggenheim Fellowship. During this time, he also wrote most of the poems included in THE FALL OF AMERICA and was active in anti-Vietnam war activities, as well being active in the cause to legalize marijuana. His also attended the 1968 Deomocratic National Convention in Chicago witnessing firsthand the chaos that ensued. In 1969, Ginsberg was awarded a grant by the National Institute of the Arts. In 1974, he was inducted into the America Academy of the Arts and Letters, the same year he co-founded the Jack Kerouac School for Disembodied Poets at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, where he taught for several summers. In July 1982,Ginsberg put together the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Celebration of ON THE ROAD in Boulder. In May 1994, New York University sponsored the 50th Anniversary of the Beat Generation with Ginsberg and Kerouac biographer Ann Charters serving as Co-chairs. Allen Ginsberg died on April 5,1997, in New York City. During his life he establised himself as a spoksman for not only the Beat Generation, but also the generation that followed. He was active in many social and political causes. Ginsberg is depicted as Leon Levinsky in Kerouac’s first novel, THE TOWN AND THE CITY (1950) and appears as Irwin Garden, Adam Moorad, and Alvah Goldbook in other Kerouac novels. His COLLECTED POEMS:1947-1980 was published by Viking in 1985, and a biography, DHARMA LION by Michael Schmacher, was published in 1992. He made many recordings of his poetry and enjoyed being on stage with contemporary musicians. He was a chronologist of the Beat Generation, and part of his vast collection of photographs, SNAPSHOT POETIC: A PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMOIR OF THE BEAT ERA was published in 1993. Click here for a list of Ginsberg's works in our collection. |