Allen Ginsberg
American poet whose Howl, read at the Six Gallery in San Francisco in 1955, launched the Beat movement and introduced a Whitmanesque prophetic voice into postwar poetry. Kaddish is his elegy for his mother.
Works
- Howl and Other PoemsVisionary beat epic denouncing materialism, war, and conformity in American society
- Kaddish and Other PoemsLong elegiac sequence mourning death of poet's mother and meditating on loss
- Reality SandwichesErotic and prophetic poems celebrating desire, travel, and spiritual transcendence
- Planet NewsTravel journal poems documenting journeys across continents and states of consciousness
- The Fall of AmericaHistorical epic documenting American decline, Vietnam War, and spiritual searching