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Allen Ginsberg (Censorship (Ready Reference series))

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In 1954, Allen Ginsberg, a former Columbia University student, moved to California to meet the West Coast contingent of the Beat movement. On October 13, 1955, he gave a reading of “Howl,” a long Whitmanesque poem, at Six Gallery, an outlet for Beat visual and literary arts. His poem chronicled the depressed state of post-World War II Americans who felt alienated from a prevailing materialistic and technological culture and tried to escape through alcohol, drugs, and sex. It contained language and descriptions of sexual activities that tested the mores of the...

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