-Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg was the leading poet of the Beat generation of writers in the 1950s. In 1955, during the one-hundredth anniversary of the first edition of Leaves of Grass, Ginsberg wrote a long, sprawling, and (according to a 1957 obscenity trial) obscene poem titled “Howl” that immediately positioned him as Whitman’s lineal heir. As an out gay man, Ginsberg wrote openly about his own sexuality as well as Whitman’s. In one poem he imagined running into Whitman at a supermarket: “I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.” Unlike the patriotic and nationalistic Whitman, however, Ginsberg was harshly critical of U. S. policies in the post-war period.