June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997
As the website of the Allen Ginsberg Estate states, Allen Ginsberg was a “Renowned poet, world traveler, spiritual seeker, founding member of a major literary movement, champion of human and civil rights, photographer and songwriter, political gadfly, teacher and co-founder of a poetics school.”1
Ginsberg is one of the more well-known members of the “Beat Generation,” which was a group of individual writers who challenged the norms of society, beginning in the 1950s. He died at 70 years old, technically to liver cancer. A few years later, some of Ginsberg’s personal items were auctioned off by Sotheby’s in New York along with other Beat writers’ property, such as Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady. The auction was partly organized by Bill Morgan, who was “…one of the people Ginsberg designated to deal with his effects…”2
It is said that Ginsberg wrote his own epitaph – “Father Breath Once More Farewell, Birth You Gave Was No Thing Ill, My Heart Is Still As Time Will Tell.” 3
1 http://www.allenginsberg.org/index.php?page=bio
2 http://www.villagevoice.com/1999-10-05/nyc-life/poetry-project/
3 Tod Benoit, Where Are They Buried? (New York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Inc.), 278.
