Allen Ginsberg

Ginsberg first read Howl publicly at San Francisco's Six Gallery on October 7, 1955. City Lights published Howl and Other Poems in 1956, making the poem central to Beat literature.

In 1957, City Lights publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti and bookstore manager Shigeyoshi Murao faced obscenity charges connected to Howl. Judge Clayton Horn ruled the poem was not obscene, a major free-speech moment in American publishing.

Ginsberg was part of the Beat Generation circle with Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. Their work helped define postwar counterculture through books such as Howl, On the Road, and Naked Lunch.

Kaddish is the usual next major work. Ginsberg wrote it as an elegy for his mother, Naomi Ginsberg, and it shows a more personal side of the poet than the public force of Howl.