A prominent member of the Beat Generation of writers, Allen Ginsberg is one of America’s most legendary and lauded poets.  His magnum opus, Howl, stands with Eliot’s The Waste Land as one of the defining poems of modern America.  An outspoken activist, Ginsberg lobbied against the Vietnam War and lobbied for freedom of speech, gay rights, the legalization of drugs.  His book The Fall of America won the National Book Award.  He died in 1997.