Allen Ginsberg: Cosmopolitan Comic

Allen Ginsberg is one of the best-known voices in the history of modern poetry. Coming to global attention with the groundbreaking collection Howl and Other Poems in 1956, he went on to produce a hugely influential body of work spanning the remaining decades of the twentieth century. A founder member of the Beat Generation, he became the public face of the American counterculture, and an outspoken champion of alternative lifestyles and progressive politics. Indeed, Ginsberg’s status as a cultural icon has tended to eclipse his poetry to some extent. Allen Ginsberg: Cosmopolitan Comic returns us to his words, re-examining his work from a contemporary perspective, and offering a concise, stimulating, and accessible introduction. It reveals an exuberant, lyrical, and profoundly spiritual poet whose humour and wisdom remain strikingly relevant to our times.

About the author:

Dr Paul McDonald was Course Leader for Creative and Professional Writing at the University of Wolverhampton. He is a novelist, poet and critic. His primary interest is humour, and he takes a perverse pleasure in the fact that Googling ‘the oldest joke in the world’ throws up several hundred pages with his name on.

88  pages

ISBN: 978-1-910996-39-3