The Jewish Chronicle
On this day: Allen Ginsberg dies
April 5 1997: Voice of a generation
April 5, 2011 09:23
April 5 1997: Voice of a generation
April 5, 2011 09:23On his death at the age of 70, the JC eulogised Ginsberg as "a lay cantor-rabbi for the worldwide "make love not war" movement". Fourteen years later, his name and straggly-bearded image remain as iconic as they were at the height of the hippie era.
One of the foremost counter-cultural voices of his time, Ginsberg was born in New Jersey in 1926 to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents. His mother was a militant communist, his father an agnostic socialist.
His notorious poem Howl, first performed at a free public reading in San Francisco in 1955, took on conformity, capitalism and the social norms of 1950s America.
Two years later it became the subject of an obscenity trial over its allegedly "filthy, vulgar, obscene, and disgusting language", as well as sexually explicit content. The judge eventually ruled that it was not obscene.
