Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg - renowned poet - world traveler

Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg’s signal poem "Howl" overcame censorship in 1957 to become one of the most widely read poems of the century. In 1965 Ginsberg was simultaneously crowned Prague May King, then expelled by Czech police and placed on the FBI's Dangerous Security List. He has traveled to and taught in the People's Republic of China, the Soviet Union, Australia, Scandinavia, and Eastern Europe, where he received Yugoslavia's Struga Poetry Festival "Golden Wreath" 1986. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and co-founder of the Jack Kerouac School at Naropa University, the first accredited Buddhist College in the West, he was Distinguished Professor at Brooklyn College from 1986 till his death in 1997. He was winner of the Harriet Monroe Poetry Award given by the University of Chicago in 1991 and in 1993 received France's "Chevalier de l'Ordre des Artes et des Lettres." He premiered Kronos Quartet’s poetry music performance of "Howl” at Carnegie Hall in 1994.
Allen Ginsberg was born June 3, 1926, Newark, NJ & died New York City,
April 5, 1997.

Significant publications & recordings:

Selected Poems 1947-1997, Harper Collins, 2007
Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews 1958-1996 Harper Collins 2001 ed. David Carter
Deliberate Prose: Selected Essays 1952-1995 ed Bill Morgan, HarperCollins, 2000
Howl Annotated, Ed Barry Miles, Harper Perennial, 1995, 2007;
Wichita Vortex Sutra [Artemis Records] 2004
The Ballad of the Skeletons w/Paul McCartney, Philip Glass, Lenny Kaye producer [Mouth Almighty/Mercury] 1996
Howl, U.S.A. Lee Hyla score, Kronos Quartet [Nonesuch] 1996
The Lion for Real [Mouth Almighty] 1997
Holy Soul Jelly Roll: Poems and Songs 1949-1993 [Rhino] 1994
Hydrogen Jukebox Philip Glass, libretto Allen Ginsberg [Elektra/Nonesuch] 1993
Snapshot Poetics Chronicle Books, 1993
Allen Ginsberg Photographs Twelve Trees Press, 1991

For more about Allen Ginsberg go to
http://www.allenginsberg.org


(photo credit: Allen Ginsberg, photographer unknown. Used with permission. All rights reserved. Copyright Allen Ginsberg.)