Best Minds: How Allen Ginsberg Made Revolutionary Poetry from Madness

WINNER, 2024 BEAT STUDIES ASSOCIATION AWARDS

A revelatory look at how poet Allen Ginsberg transformed experiences of mental illness and madness into some of the most powerful and widely read poems of the twentieth century.

Allen Ginsberg’s 1956 poem “Howl” opens with one of the most resonant phrases in modern poetry: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.” Thirty years later, Ginsberg entrusted a Columbia Universitymedical student with materials not shared with anyone el...