Allen Ginsberg

A volume culled from the National Book Award-winning poet's entire half-century career is published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Howl and offers insight into his influence as an iconic Beat Generation writer.

A collection of recordings written and read by one of the greatest literary and cultural figures of the 20th. The collection is accompanied by a special 64 page booklet containing the poems.

Upon the release of his first published work, Howl and Other Poems (1956), Allen Ginsberg became the unlikely force of a movement that would change a generation: art, literature, sex, love, family and politics. None would ever be seen the same way again.

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"First thought, best thought." This was the phrase that poet Allen Ginsberg used to describe spontaneous and fearless writing, a way of telling the truth that arises from naked and authentic experience. For more than 30 years, groundbreaking teachers at Naropa University such as Ginsberg and his colleagues Anne Waldman, William S. Burroughs, and Diane di Prima have inspired emerging poets and prose writers to express themselves with unfettered honesty...

Illustrating how the poems we love could have been written differently, or even badly, the author rewrites poems by authors ranging from Elizabeth Bishop to Shakespeare, and displays the reworked version side-by-side with the original, so one can gain a better understanding of the original work's merits.

The first collection of letters between the two leading figures of the Beat movement
Writers and cultural icons Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg are the most celebrated names of the Beat Generation, linked together not only by their shared artistic sensibility but also by a deep and abiding friend­ship, one that colored their lives and greatly influenced their writing. Editors Bill Morgan and David Stanford shed new light on this...