Allen Ginsberg (1926-97) was born in Newark, New Jersey, to a poet-teacher father and Russian emigre mother. When "Howl and Other Poems" was impounded by San Francisco customs in 1956, the subsequent trial for obscenity catapulted Ginsberg and his publisher City Lights to national fame and...

Allen Ginsberg (1926-97) was born in Newark, New Jersey, to a poet-teacher father and Russian emigre mother. When "Howl and Other Poems" was impounded by San Francisco customs in 1956, the subsequent trial for obscenity catapulted Ginsberg and his publisher City Lights to national fame and helped to define the Beat Generation.