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The A-Z of William Blake: 'G' is for Allen Ginsberg

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From: The Independent - London
Date: 20001113
Author:Kevin Jackson

THE AMERICAN beat poet worshiped Blake to the point of idolatry, and dated the real beginning of his own poetic vocation to an auditory hallucination he experienced in New York as a young man, when the voice of Blake addressed him directly. Much of Ginsberg's poetry can be seen as an attempt to follow Blake's example both as a writer and as a self- appointed prophet, and his enthusiasm for Blake never seems to have waned - one of his last publications was a sort of updating of the "Proverbs of Hell". Ginsberg was also fond of singing Blake's lyrics to the accompaniment of guitar and squeeze- ...

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