SOURCE: "Allen Ginsberg," in London Times, April 7, 1997, p. 23.

[In the following obituary, the critic discusses Ginsberg's role as a voice of protest and his contribution to the Beat movement.]

Whether as a prophetic bard or a pretentious beatnik, Allen Ginsberg has survived for four decades as an icon of American counterculture. He was one of the last survivors of the Beats, a cool cabal of mid-Fifties writers who, centering on Jack Kerouac, sought to rebel against staid, middle-class convention.

"Hold back the edges of your gowns, Ladies, we are going though hell," wrote William Carlos Williams in his introduction to Ginsberg's 1956 poem Howl. A court case ensued in which the publisher was, unsuccessfully, prosecuted for obscenity. Howl at once became one of the most widely circulated books of the time; a bible for a beatnik youth. Its opening lines remain one of the most notorious passages in postwar...