Allen Ginsberg

IRWIN ALLEN GINSBERG was an American poet of the second half of the twentieth century and the founder of Beatnik culture.

He was born on June 3, 1926, in Newark. His father, Louis, was a schoolteacher who wrote poetry in his spare time, and his mother, Naomi, was an unruly nudist and radical communist who went mad shortly after Allen was born. Allen grew up in Paterson, and his childhood years were filled with his mother’s frightening and eccentric outbursts. The gravely ill Naomi trusted only Allen when it seemed to her that her family and the whole world around her were plotting against her.

In high school Ginsberg discovered Walt Whitman, but despite his attraction to poetry, he followed his father’s advice and began planning a career as a lawyer. With these plans he entered Columbia University as a freshman. But Allen was not destined to realize himself as a lawyer, since he immediately became part of the legendary circle that included Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, and others. The people among whom Allen found himself helped free him from pedantic notions about the art of writing; in return, Allen instilled in them his own distinctive literary taste.

In the spring of 1945 Allen Ginsberg was expelled from Columbia University for an indecent poem written on the window of his room, as well as for allowing Kerouac to sleep at his place. In July of that same year Ginsberg enrolled in the Merchant Marine Academy, but with the end of the war the academy ceased to exist. Ginsberg began experimenting with Benzedrine and marijuana, spending his time in Kerouac’s and Burroughs’s company and developing the enigmatic poetry of “new vision.”

In 1947 Ginsberg became close to Neal Cassady, and together with Kerouac they began roaming across America. Their adventures were later described in Kerouac’s novel On the Road. At this time Ginsberg’s mother’s condition worsened, and she was hospitalized. And in 1948 Allen began to have astonishing visions. One fine summer day William Blake came to visit Allen. This was a very important event in his life: Ginsberg felt that he had found God.

In 1949 Allen