American poet Allen Ginsberg.

Allen Ginsberg

(1926 - 1997)

The poet Allen Ginsberg was suspended from Columbia University in 1945 when the dean of students, responding to a complaint, entered Ginsberg’s room and found him in bed with Jack Kerouac; he then moved in with William S. Burroughs. Along with the former’s On The Road and the latter’s Naked Lunch, Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems is a central text of the Beat movement.

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My own experience is that a certain kind of genius among students is best brought out in bed.

—Allen Ginsberg, 1981

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