Irwin Allen Ginsberg (/ˈɡɪnzbɜːrɡ/; June 3, 1926 

– April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer.

As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and
Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Generation. He vigorously opposed militarism, economic
materialism, and sexual repression, and he embodied various aspects of this counterculture with his
views on drugs, sex, multiculturalism, hostility to bureaucracy, and openness to Eastern religions.[1][2]

Best known for his poem "Howl", Ginsberg denounced what he saw as the destructive forces of
capitalism and conformity in the United States.[3][4][5] San Francisco police and US Customs seized
copies of "Howl" in 1956, and a subsequent obscenity trial in 1957 attracted widespread publicity due
to the poem's language and descriptions of heterosexual and homosexual sex at a time when sodomy
laws made (male) homosexual acts a crime in every state.[6][7] The poem reflected Ginsberg's own
sexuality and his relationships with a number of men, including Peter Orlovsky, his lifelong partner.[8]
Judge Clayton W. Horn ruled that "Howl" was not obscene, asking: "Would there be any freedom of
press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemisms?"[4]: 338