Literary Nonfiction. Poetry History & Criticism. Memoir. Spanning a decade of Ginsberg's life in letters, essays, and lectures, this book includes journal entries on his encounters with Ezra Pound, transcribed conversations with other poets and artists, and notes from Ginsberg's Spiritual Poetics course entitled "First Thought, Best Thought."

Author City: NEW YORK, NY USA

Allen Ginsberg was born June 3, 1926, the son of Naomi Ginsberg, Russian émigré, and Louis Ginsberg, lyric poet and school teacher, in Paterson, New Jersey. To these facts Ginsberg adds: "High school in Paterson till 17, Columbia College, merchant marine, Texas and Denver copyboy, Times Square, amigos in jail, dishwashing, book reviews, Mexico City, market research, Satori in Harlem, Yucatan and Chiapas 1954, West Coast 3 years. Later Arctic Sea trip, Tangier, Venice, Amsterdam, Paris, read at Oxford Harvard Columbia Chicago, quit, wrote 'Kaddish' 1959, made tape to leave behind & fade in Orient awhile. Carl Solomon to whom 'Howl' is addressed, is a intuitive Bronx dadaist and prose-poet." In 1973, he and poet Anne Waldman co-founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. Ginsberg succumbed to liver cancer in 1997.