The poet Allen Ginsberg, an iconoclast in both his politically charged writing and unconventional lifestyle, epitomized the anti-establishment "Beat" movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In the midst of a generation shaped by the aftermath of the Holocaust and the atomic bomb, mass conformity, the hysteria of McCarthyism, and government censorship of personal liberties and civil rights, Ginsberg became a popular voice of artistic defiance. In American popular and academic culture, Ginsberg's influence as a poet, musician, artist, professor, and agitator has continued to grow even after his death. Bearing unofficial titles such as the "father of the Beat Generation," the "prophet of the 1960s," and the "guru of the counterculture movement," Ginsberg remains a cultural icon of one of America's most socially and politically turbulent eras.

Allen Ginsberg

Along with other Beats like Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, Ginsberg embraced Eastern philosophies...