Howl by Allen Ginsberg
The prophetic poem that launched a generation when it was first published in 1956 is here presented in a commemorative 40th Anniversary Edition. When the book arrived from its British printers, it was seized almost immediately by U.S. Customs, and shortly thereafter the San Francisco police arrested its publisher and editor, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, together with the City Lights Bookstore manager, Shigeyoshi Murao. The two of them were charged with disseminating obscene literature, and the case went to trial in the Municipal Court of Judge Clayton Horn. A parade of distinguished literary and academic witnesses persuaded the judge that the title poem was indeed not obscene and that it had redeeming social significance. Thus was Howl and Other Poems freed to become the single most influential poetic work of the post World War I era, with over 800,000 copies now in print.
Ginsberg, Allen: - Allen Ginsberg was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1926. As a Columbia College student in the 1940s he began close friendships with William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso and Jack Kerouac. He became associated with the Beat movement and the 1950s San Francisco Renaissance poets Gary Snyder and Michael McClure. After jobs as a labourer, market researcher and sailor, Ginsberg published his first volume, Howl and Other Poems, in 1956. Howl overcame censorship trials to become one of the most widely read poems of the century, translated into twenty-eight languages. In 1965 Ginsberg was, in a matter of weeks, crowned Prague May King, expelled by the Czech police and placed on the FBI's Dangerous Security list. Though he travelled widely, teaching in India, China, and Western and Eastern Europe, his home for most of his life was New York's Lower East Side. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Allen Ginsberg was awarded the medal of Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the French Minister of Culture in 1993, honoured as Harvard Phi Beta Kappa Poet 1994 and co-founded the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute, the first accredited Buddhist college in the western world. Ginsberg died in New York on 5 April 1997, eight days after being diagnosed seriously ill.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780060926113 |
| ISBN 10 | 0060926112 |
| Title | Howl |
| Author | Allen Ginsberg |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Jonathan Ball Publishers SA |
| Year published | 1995-12-31 |
| Number of pages | 194 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |