I respectfully beg to differ. As a person, who is both a lover of poetry and a published poet myself, I consider Ginsberg to be one of the truly great poets that America has produced, and I am absolutely not ashamed to admit it.
I have always preferred to focus most of my regard for Ginsberg on his work rather than on the lifestyle that he chose to live. Conservative or liberal, many writers and artists make poor choices in their personal lives, and indeed some can be or have been quite repulsive in their own ways.
Al Capp and Ernest Hemingway immediately come to mind for examples of more conservative writers, who were nevertheless not exactly all sunshine and roses in their personal lives.
~ Allen Ginsberg, poet.
I’ve written some research work on Ginsberg, and while I find Howl to be a really incredible poem, much of Ginsbergs other work is not impressive. I tend to agree with Kerouak that “Beat” wasn’t what Ginsberg tried to craft it to be, but was really a New Romantism.
Howl is one hell of a poem though!
I’ve read and written a lot of poetry. I lived around columbia U and went to school there and read poetry at the west end.
My friends from the period who knew nothing of poetry thought ginsberg was great. I though ginsberg was a babbling idiot. In prose I thought mailer was a babbling idiot too.
But that’s just me.