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Poet Allen Ginsberg dead at 70
April 5, 1997Web posted at: 5:02 p.m. EST (2202 GMT)
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Poet Allen Ginsberg, whose raw, angry verse epitomized America's "beat" literary movement in the 1950s and '60s, died Saturday. He was 70.
He died at 2:39 a.m. surrounded by family and friends at his New York apartment, said Bill Morgan, his friend and archivist.
On Thursday, it was learned Ginsberg had terminal liver cancer, and doctors had said the poet was expected to live between four and 12 months.
The poet laureate of the Beat Generation, Ginsberg was born June 3, 1926, in Newark, New Jersey. He was educated at Columbia University and was a longtime resident of New York City's East Village neighborhood.
Ginsberg and the other "beat" writers are credited with starting a genre of American prose and poetry in the late 1940s that celebrated free-wheeling Bohemians skeptical of moral codes and political power.
The word beatnik is derived from the movement, which also gave rise to the hippies of the 1960s.
Ginsberg along with writers such as Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, William Burroughs, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Lucien Carr came to embody the anti-establishment, non-conformist literary movement that experimented heavily with hallucinogenic drugs.
In 1956, Ginsberg published "Howl and Other Poems," a book of free verse considered the preeminent poetic work of the "beat" movement.
"Howl" begins: "I saw the vbest minds of my generation destroyed by madness, staring hysterical naked."
The lengthy poem expressed the anxieties and ideals of a generation alienated from mainstream society. It was the subject of an obscenity case, based on its graphic sexual references, but the publisher was cleared in a landmark decision in 1957.
Ginsberg became a celebrant of the counterculture movement of the 1960s, a ubiquitous figure at poetry readings on college campuses, a strident critic of the war in Vietnam and an advocate for gay rights.
He taught English at Brooklyn College and has written more than 40 collections of poetry. His book "Fall of America" won the National Book Award in 1972.
His father, Louis, who also was a poet, died of liver cancer in 1968.
A statement released by Ginsberg's physician Thursday said Ginsberg suffered for many years from hepatitis C, which led to cirrhosis of the liver that was diagnosed in 1988.
The cancer was discovered when Ginsberg, who has been suffering from severe fatigue and jaundice, underwent a biopsy, according to the statement.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
Related stories:
- Poet Allen Ginsberg has terminal liver cancer - April 4, 1997
Related sites:
Note: Pages will open in a new browser window- From Howl
- Resources on Allen Ginsberg
- Interview with Allen Ginsberg
- Allen Ginsberg - Bibliographies, Interviews, and Research Sources and Information pertaining to Allen Ginsberg.
- Allen Ginsberg - Shadow Changes into Bone - The Clearinghouse for All Things Ginsberg
- Poetry of Allen Ginsberg
- Allen Ginsberg's FBI file
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