Allen Ginsberg

Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American Beat poet born in Newark, New Jersey. He was a central figure among Beat Generation writers. Ginsberg is best known for "Howl", a long poem about consumer society's negative human values.

Sourced

• I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
  dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix
  angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night.
  • Howl (1956)

• America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
  • America (1956)

• America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
  • America (1956)

• I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
  • America (1956)

• America, Sacco & Vanzetti must not die.
  • America (1956)

• The CIA and the Mafia are in cahoots
  • Hadda be Playin' on a Jukebox (1975)

• Nobody knows whether we were catalysts or invented something, or just the froth riding on a wave of its own. We were all three, I suppose.
  • Great Poets Howl: A Study of Allen Ginsberg's Poetry, 1943-1955 ISBN 3-8204-7761-6)