Allen Ginsberg was the poet who cracked America’s buttoned-up 1950s façade wide open with a single word: Howl. His long, incantatory lines gave voice to the outsiders — junkies, queers, dropouts, and the disillusioned. For the Beat Generation, Ginsberg was both bard and lightning rod.
When Howl was put on trial for obscenity in 1957, the courtroom became a battlefield over freedom of expression. Ginsberg’s defense won, marking a cultural turning point: language itself was no longer bound by propriety. His work blurred the sacred and the profane, jazz rhythms with prophetic rage, Buddhist mantras with gay desire.
Beyond the poems, Ginsberg was everywhere: marching for free speech, chanting with Hare Krishnas, hanging with Bob Dylan, dropping acid with Timothy Leary. He embodied a belief that poetry wasn’t just words on a page — it was a social force, a spell cast to expand consciousness.