Allen Ginsberg was the bard of the Beat generation, and the collection Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems includes his most iconic works, published in Penguin Modern Classics, including the poem Howl, which became the subject of an obscenity trial, marking a defining moment in twentieth-century history.
'I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked'
As an icon of the Beat movement and visionary poet, Allen Ginsberg broke boundaries with his daring and spectacular poetry. This new collection gathers the famous poems that defined his career as an essential figure of counterculture. Included are the revelatory poem Howl, which was the subject of an obscenity trial when it was published in 1956, the poignant lament for his dead mother Kaddish, the scathing indictment of his homeland America, and the confessional Mescaline. Dark, ecstatic, and rhapsodic, these creations show why Ginsberg was one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century.
Allen Ginsberg (1926-97) was an American poet, best known for the poem Howl (1956), which celebrates his friends from the Beat generation and attacks the destructive forces of materialism and conformity observed in the United States at the time. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, received the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres medal from the French Minister of Culture, won the National Book Award for The Fall of America, and was a co-founder of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute, the first accredited Buddhist college in the Western world.
If you liked Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems, you might like Jack Kerouac's On the Road, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.
'The poem that defined a generation' Guardian on Howl
'He avoids everything but experiences it all to the fullest' William Carlos Williams
