Allen Ginsberg: Beat Poet and Much More Quiz

Answer: June 3, 1926

Irwin Allen Ginsberg was born in Newark, New Jersey on June 3, 1926, to Louis and Naomi Ginsberg.

Answer: True

Allen's father, Louis, was a lyric poet and high school teacher. He instilled in Allen a love and appreciation of poetry. He and his dad were very close, and they often did poetry readings together.

Answer: Columbia University

According to some sources, Ginsberg attended Montclair State University in New Jersey for a short time. He was then granted a scholarship by the YMHA to attend a prestigious Ivy League school, Columbia University, in New York. It was there that he forged the literary friendships that defined the Beat movement. While at Columbia, he wrote for the campus literary journal and participated in a literary and debate group.

Ginsberg was suspended from Columbia in 1945 and joined the Merchant Marines. He returned to school in 1946.

Answer: All of these

While attending Columbia University, Ginsberg made friends with Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and William S. Burroughs. In 1950 he met and befriended poets Gregory Corso and William Carlos Williams.

Answer: All of these

Allen was very open about being gay and he was an outspoken champion of gay rights.

He and William S. Burroughs (who was married) had an affair for several months in 1953. Allen broke things off, and William moved to Tangier.

Allen had a huge crush on Neal Cassady. He lived with Cassady and his wife, Carolyn, in San Jose, California in 1954, until Carolyn walked in on Allen and Neal in bed together. Soon afterward, Allen moved to San Francisco.

Allen met poet Peter Orlovsky at painter Robert LaVigne's apartment in San Francisco in December 1954. He promptly fell in love with the younger man after first seeing a painting of him and then meeting Peter himself. Peter and Allen remained partners until Allen's death in 1997, although they had an "open" relationship. Allen listed Peter as his spouse in his "Who's Who" listing.

Answer: All of these

Allen grew up in New Jersey and moved to New York to go to Columbia University in 1943. He moved to San Jose and then San Francisco in 1954 and to Berkeley in 1955. In 1957 he moved to Paris and lived in the "Beat Hotel" with Orlovsky and Corso, and later, Burroughs. He spent several years traveling and moved back to San Francisco in 1963.

He also traveled all over the world: Mexico, India, Morocco, Greece, Spain, Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Chile, Canada, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Poland, England, and Italy, to name several countries that he visited.

Answer: It was published in 1955.

Ginsberg first read an excerpt from "Howl" publicly in October 1955 at Six Gallery in San Francisco, but it was not published until a year later. "Howl and Other Poems" was published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti's bookstore, City Lights Books, in October 1956.

The explicit language was considered shocking at the time, and it was banned for obscenity. A clerk at the bookstore was arrested in 1957 for selling the book to two undercover cops. Ferlinghetti himself was served with a warrant. Naturally all this controversy helped to boost sales of the book. The ban was lifted by a judge later that year.

Answer: His mother

"Kaddish" was written mainly about his mother, Naomi. She died in 1956 in a mental hospital. She had suffered from mental illness through most of Ginsberg's childhood. Two days after her death, Ginsberg actually received a letter from his mother that she had written right before her death. This made quite an impression on him.

It took him three years to finish writing "Kaddish". "Kaddish" is a Jewish prayer often associated with mourning rituals.

Jack Kerouac was very much alive when "Kaddish" was written. William Blake was a big inspiration to Ginsberg, but not for this particular poem. Carl Solomon, who also suffered from mental illness, was the inspiration for "Howl".

Answer: Both of these

Allen Ginsberg was deeply spiritual and a seeker of knowledge. Although he was raised in the Jewish religion, as an adult he was particularly interested in the Eastern religions of Buddhism and Hinduism. In 1962, he traveled to India and met with many holy men.

Among his teachers were the Tibetan Buddhist Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and the Hindu gurus Swami Muktananda of the Siddha Yoga tradition and A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder of ISKCON, better known as "the Hare Krishnas".

Answer: Left-of-center and politically active.

Allen Ginsberg held mostly left-wing political views and was interested in political and social issues from an early age. His mother, Naomi, was a member of the Communist Party and used to take Allen with her to rallies and meetings when he was a child.

As early as 1938, Allen wrote about politics in his journal, and in 1942, while in high school, he ran errands for a local labor leader and congressional candidate, Irving Abramson.

Ginsberg traveled to South America in 1960 and met with people who were active in the Communist movement. You'd think his communist leanings would have made him a favorite of Castro and communist leaders in Europe, but quite the contrary. When he visited Cuba in 1965, he made waves by insinuating that Castro's brother might be gay. Several of his fans were arrested. The Cuban government escorted him from his hotel room and stuck him on a plane. On May 1, 1965, Ginsberg was crowned "King of May" in Prague, Czechoslovakia. The local authorities confiscated his writings and expelled him from the country. Poor Allen couldn't win: after all his troubles behind the Iron Curtain, he returned to the U.S. only to find that the FBI had amassed a big file on him!

In the 1960s, Allen was involved in the anti-war movement. He attended several peace protests, such as one staged by the Hell's Angels in October 1965. He helped organize a "Pentagon Exorcism" in 1967. He was even arrested for his anti-war activities in December 1967. He also participated in what was supposed to be a peaceful protest of the Chicago Democratic Convention in 1968 and later testified in the famous "Chicago Seven" trial.

Ginsberg experimented with drugs, particularly LSD. He was friends with Timothy Leary and believed that LSD was beneficial.

His political activism continued all through the 1970s, 1980s until his death in 1997. He was particularly interested in Nicaragua in the 1980s.

Ginsberg was a champion of gay rights, an issue particularly close to his heart. He also supported the controversial organization NAMBLA, "in defense of free speech".