Irwin Allen Ginsberg was born on June 3rd, 1926 in Paterson, New Jersey. His father, Louis Ginsberg, was a high school teacher and a published poet; His mother, Naomi, went insane in her early adulthood and was put in a mental institution. Trying to understand why his mother acted the way she did, Allen was very confused about quite a bit as a child. He could not understand why his mother thought that the entire family was against her, except for Allen. All while Allen was trying to understand his mother, he was trying to figure out why he felt lust for other boys his age. Ginsberg attended Columbia University in NYC, where he met Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and Herbert Huncke. Reading William Blake in a Harlem apartment in the Summer of 1948, Ginsberg had a vision in which Blake came to him in person. This was an amazing moment in his life; He believed now that he had found God. In October of 1955, Ginsberg read his epic poem "Howl" to a large crowd at San Francisco's Six Gallery. In 1974, he won the National Book Award for "The Fall of America." Also this year, along with help from Anne Waldman, he founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. Ginsberg died on April 5th, 1997 in the Lower East Side.
Carolyn Cassady Gregory Corso Gary Snyder Kenneth Rexroth Lucien Carr Michael McClure
John Clellon Holmes Philip Lamantia Bob Kaufman Jan Kerouac LeRoi Jones Bob Dylan
Charles Bukowski Anne Waldman Joanne Kyger Herbert Huncke
Peter Orlovsky Philip Whalen
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