Ginsberg referred to his parents in a 1985 interview as "old-fashioned delicatessen philosophers". Mark's Church in-the-Bowery which would later hold a memorial service for him after his death. Ginsberg also took part in public readings at the Episcopal St. It was noted that the stolen property was not his, but belonged to an acquaintance. He was allegedly being prosecuted for harboring stolen goods in his dorm room. Īccording to The Poetry Foundation, Ginsberg spent several months in a mental institution after he pleaded insanity during a hearing. Ginsberg has stated that he considered his required freshman seminar in Great Books, taught by Lionel Trilling, to be his favorite Columbia course. He was a resident of Hartley Hall, where other Beat Generation poets such as Jack Kerouac and Herbert Gold also lived. While at Columbia, Ginsberg contributed to the Columbia Review literary journal, the Jester humor magazine, won the Woodberry Poetry Prize, served as president of the Philolexian Society (literary and debate group), and joined Boar's Head Society (poetry society). In 1945, he joined the Merchant Marine to earn money to continue his education at Columbia. In 1943, Ginsberg graduated from Eastside High School and briefly attended Montclair State College before entering Columbia University on a scholarship from the Young Men's Hebrew Association of Paterson. While in high school, Ginsberg became interested in the works of Walt Whitman, inspired by his teacher's passionate reading. He published his first poems in the Paterson Morning Call. Īs a teenager, Ginsberg began to write letters to The New York Times about political issues, such as World War II and workers' rights. He was the second son of Louis Ginsberg, a schoolteacher and sometime poet, and the former Naomi Levy, a Russian emigree and fervent Marxist. Ginsberg was born into a Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in nearby Paterson. 1.7 England and the International Poetry Incarnationīiography Early life and family.1.6 To Paris and the "Beat Hotel", Tangier and India.
He vigorously opposed militarism, economic materialism, and sexual repression, and he embodied various aspects of this counterculture with his views on drugs, sex, multiculturalism, hostility to bureaucracy, and openness to Eastern religions. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Generation. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Irwin Allen Ginsberg ( / ˈ ɡ ɪ n z b ɜːr ɡ/ June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer.