Claim: Allen Ginsberg is a poet.

Irwin Allen Ginsberg -LRB- -LSB- ˈɡɪnzbərɡ -RSB- June 3 , 1926 -- April 5 , 1997 -RRB- was an American poet of Jewish origin , and one of the leading figures of both the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the counterculture that soon would follow . He vigorously opposed militarism , economic materialism and sexual repression and was known as embodying various aspects of this counterculture , such as his views on drugs , hostility to bureaucracy and openness to Eastern religions . He was one of many influential American writers of his time known as the Beat Generation , which included famous writers such as Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs .   Ginsberg is best known for his poem `` Howl '' , in which he denounced what he saw as the destructive forces of capitalism and conformity in the United States . In 1956 , `` Howl '' was seized by San Francisco police and US Customs . In 1957 , it attracted widespread publicity when it became the subject of an obscenity trial , as it described heterosexual and homosexual sex at a time when sodomy laws made homosexual acts a crime in every U.S. state . `` Howl '' reflected Ginsberg 's own homosexuality and his relationships with a number of men , including Peter Orlovsky , his lifelong partner . Judge Clayton W. Horn ruled that `` Howl '' was not obscene , adding , `` Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemisms ? ''   Ginsberg was a practicing Buddhist who studied Eastern religious disciplines extensively . He lived modestly , buying his clothing in second-hand stores and residing in downscale apartments in New York 's East Village . One of his most influential teachers was the Tibetan Buddhist the Venerable Chögyam Trungpa , the founder of the Naropa Institute in Boulder , Colorado . At Trungpa 's urging , Ginsberg and poet Anne Waldman started The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics there in 1974 .   Ginsberg took part in decades of non-violent political protest against everything from the Vietnam War to the War on Drugs . His poem `` September on Jessore Road , '' calling attention to the plight of Bangladeshi refugees , exemplifies what the literary critic Helen Vendler described as Ginsberg 's tireless persistence in protesting against `` imperial politics , and persecution of the powerless . ''   His collection The Fall of America shared the annual U.S. National Book Award for Poetry in 1974 . In 1979 he received the National Arts Club gold medal and was inducted into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters . Ginsberg was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1995 for his book Cosmopolitan Greetings : Poems 1986 -- 1992 .