It’s March 13, and the Beats keep on beating.  Yesterday we delved into the mind of Jack Kerouac…today we focus on one Allen Ginsberg.  On this day in 1970, Beat poet Allen Ginsberg arrested by Miami cops for “obscenity” during a reading.  (I tried a couple times to get arrested for obscenity during a couple of readings…didn’t work.)  Ginsberg – shaggy, bearded, and unapologetic – was reciting his raw, boundary-smashing poetry, like Howl or something equally unfiltered.  He’d put a weed up the establishment’s ass since the ’50s, and this arrest was just another badge of honor.  As I mentioned yesterday, The Beats didn’t just write – they lived their defiance, and Ginsberg’s willingness to face cuffs for his words was perfectly typical.  He beat the charge later, natch, proving the pen’s might over the paddy wagon.

Born June 3, 1926, in Newark, New Jersey, Ginsberg became the Beat Generation’s howling prophet, a poet who ignited a cultural shift.  His work, especially Howl and Other Poems (1956) – smashed through mid-century America’s buttoned-up norms, blending jazz rhythms, spiritual hunger, and a middle finger to conformity.

Ginsberg’s masterpiece, Howl, dropped like a bomb in 1955 when he first read it at San Francisco’s Six Gallery.  “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked” – that opening line hit like a freight train, a wail for the misfits, junkies, and dreamers chewed up by post-war America.  It’s a three-part epic: Part 1 mourns the lost, Part II curses the industrial “Moloch” devouring souls, and Part III chants solidarity with Carl Solomon, a friend from the psychiatric ward.

The poem’s free-verse sprawl – long, breathless lines echoing Walt Whitman and jazz improv – broke every rule of tidy, academic poetry of the time.  It was visceral, sexual, and loud, landing publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti in an obscenity trial in 1957 (he won, cementing its legend).  Howl truly roared, giving voice to a generation that felt suffocated.

Of course, Ginsberg wasn’t a lone wolf – he was the glue of the Beats.  He met Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs at Columbia University in the ’40s, and their friendship fueled a literary uprising.  Kerouac’s road rambles inspired Howl’s energy; Burrough’s dark surrealism pushed its edges.  Ginsberg turned their shared ethos – spontaneity, authenticity, rebellion – into some pretty electric verse.  He also mentored younger Beats like Gregory Corse and amplified their work, hosting readings that turned poetry into a communal act.  That arrest in 1970 – just one of many run-ins – showed he was a threat to the status quo.

Ginsberg didn’t stop with Howl.  Kaddish (1961), a gut-wrenching elegy for his mother Naomi, who battled mental illness, digs into personal grief in a uniquely deep way.  Lines like “Dreams! adorations! Illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!” mix reverence and irreverence, hallmark of Ginsberg’s style.

Ginsberg’s biggest flex was making poetry dangerous again.  Before him, the 1950s poetry scene was getting a bit stiff (think T.S. Eliot’s cerebral puzzles or Robert Frost’s rather pastoral polish.  Bob Dylan cited Howl as a spark; the hippies really dug his bearded guru vibe.  His readings, often with music or chants, turned poetry into performance art.

Ginsberg co-founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in 1974, mentoring poets will Anne Waldman.  Punk icons like Patti Smith and The Clash’s Joe Strummer drank from his well…his rhythm and defiance echo in their work.  Critics bitched, as they do: he was too crude, too loud.  But that was the point.  He died in 1997, but his chants still haunt open mics.

Pour some out for Uncle Allen…for keeping it real.

N.P.: “Werewolves of London” – Cat Mantra