Deliberate Prose: Selected Essays 1952-1995

Allen Ginsberg's essays, collected here for the first time, were written over the course of a long, productive, and politically engaged life. With his finger ever on the pulse of America, Ginsberg was consistently outspoken and passionate about his beliefs.aWhether criticizing the American government, protesting the proliferation of nuclear weapons or the waging of war in Vietnam or denouncing the injustices of capitalism, Ginsberg gave voice to a moral conscience of the nation. His views on free speech and the drug culture, his quest for inner peace, the creation of the Beat generation, and his innovative poetics reflect the concerns of a postwar American culture that he helped to shape.aArranged by subject, these essays offer a fascinating counterpoint to Allen Ginsberg's poems. In the section titled -Politics and Prophecies, ' Ginsberg takes on everyone from the Federal Drug Administration to the Pentagon the Hell's Angels. In -Censorship and Sex Laws, ' he shows us how vehemently he believed in the right to free speech.aIn another section titled -Writers, ' Ginsberg focuses on the poets and writers he greatly admired, including William S. Burroughs, William Blake, Walt Whitman, Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac, and Robert Creeley. Through a combination of literary criticism and personal reflection, Ginsberg draw us into the life and work of these fellow artists. Also profiled are such influential figures as Jean Genet, W.H. Auden, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Andy Warhol, Robert Frank, and Philip Glass-artists whose work and sensibility deeply affected him.aPersonal as well as political, Deliberate Prose is more than a collection of essays from one of the great cultural figures of our time; it is a social history of postwar America, and the people, events, and issues that preoccupied a nation.