Irwin Allen Ginsberg was born in Newark, New Jersey, to a high school teacher father who published poetry and a Russian-born mother who retained her communist roots. Ginsberg’s public breakthrough came in San Francisco, in 1955, when he read the first part of “Howl” before an audience as part of an event that launched the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance. Ginsberg was a practicing Buddhist who studied Eastern religious disciplines extensively. He lived modestly, buying his clothing in second-hand stores and residing in downscale apartments in New York's East Village. One of his most influential teachers was the Tibetan Buddhist Chögyam Trungpa, the founder of the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. At Trungpa's urging, Ginsberg and poet Anne Waldman started The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics there in 1974. Although Howl and Other Poems remains Ginsberg’s best-known book, many readers consider Kaddish and Other Poems, dedicated to the memory of his mother, to be his best work. His Collected Poems, displays the scope of his writing career and exhibits the traits for which he is known: breathy lines loosely arranged into poetic figures, subject matter that ranges from intensely personal to overtly political, forthright candour, and a sometimes shocking frankness. He died surrounded by family and friends in New York City, succumbing to liver cancer via complications of hepatitis. He was 70 years old. Enjoy free online English audiobook “Holy Soul and Jelly Roll: Poems And Songs. Ah!”, poetry by Allen Ginsberg.
