I’m not a lesbian screaming in the basement strapped to a leather spiderweb
I’m not Nelson Rockefeller heart attacked in bed with his girl’s pants on
I’m not a radical Stalinist intellectual fairy
not an antisemitic Rabbi with black hat white beard & dirty fingernails
not the poet in San Francisco jail cell beaten by minions of the yellow police
I’m not Gregory Corso great Orpheus of these States
not a schoolteacher with a marvelous salary
I’m not anyone I know
in fact I’m only here for 80 years.
Allen Ginsberg
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.
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