A dozen of my own:

John Donne
Oliver Cromwell*
Michael Bond
Jeremy Taylor
George Herbert
Charles Gore
Saint Luke
HH Munro
HP Lovecraft
Julian of Norwich
William Shakespeare
Giovanni Guareschi

*Not really a writer as such, but his letters and speeches are a fine body of work.

Oh boy!

I don't think I could disagree more. Usually, if i disagree with someone (particularly on the internet) I just let it go, won't argue, because I don't care. But I'll defend Ginsberg hard.

Just about every line of 'Howl' makes my insides vibrate. I don't just like that poem, I adore it. It's probably the only poem that has ever spoken to me clearly. I wrote the whole thing out on lined paper (copied it out of a library book), about twelve A4 pages worth, and stuck it on my bedroom door when I was a teenager. It was there for years. I used it like a talisman to ward of evil from my bedroom. (I should never have taken it down, really.. it all went to shit after that.)

I got sick of the other "beat" writers. But I've never stopped loving Allen Ginsberg. If anything, I've come to appreciate him more as I've got older. 'Howl' meant a lot to me when I was younger, but I'm not sure I really knew why. As the years have gone by and things have happened, passages in it have unfolded for me, like little secrets. There is SO MUCH in it (not just because of it's length, either) almost every stanza has more than one meaning, and each one is so beautifully, powerfully put. They spring into my head randomly, just pop in there and make me smile and/or tear up sometimes. Lines in it have actually helped me, made me feel a bit better at times. And that's only a small portion of it. It's far from exhausted its use to me.

I can't tell you on how many occasions the lines "banging on the catatonic piano, the soul IS innocent and immortal, it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse" have run through my head, at various times, meaning various things to me. And how many things I've named after lines in 'Howl', how many times I've quoted and recited parts of it, scribbled bits of it onto walls and other surfaces. How many times when I'm thinking about certain people I love "while you are not safe, I am not safe" has popped into my mind.

Perhaps it's a personal thing, but.. there you go. I got an email recently from an old friend who reminded me of something I don't remember saying. Apparently one of the things she remembers most about our trip to Paris years ago is a rant I went on in the hotel room about 'Howl' and Ginsberg and how I would've married him on his deathbed, the beardy old pederast, for giving me just one line of that poem...

that is the loveliest thing i have read in ages.

i agree.

again, i strongly suggest to everyone to pick up Barry Miles's biography on Ginsberg.
reading about his life is extremely fun and inspiring as Miles wrote it very well.
another thing is you don't only learn about Ginsberg but new insights on Kerouac, Huncke, Burroughs, Carr, Cassady, etc
and the pages on the disintegration of Allen's mothers mind is utterly heartbreaking, everything he had to go through. 'Kaddish' makes much more sense.

when he meets Lucien at a dorm at Columbia in 1943 is where things especially get rolling.
i miss reading it and will probably buy a copy in the near future.
also his complete poems is a must have.
also, check out his photography books.

It does pain me to disagree with both you and crypto because I do value both of your opinions when I encounter them on this board (and that's not bullshit, I swear). I didn't intend to be disrespectful, however I stand by what I originally said. I don't think Ginsberg is a hack or anything, but his writing does not resonate with me the way it does with so many others. I can understand the praise for Howl, it is impressive and not just in its length. But, I just don't feel the poem is for me in the same way that it seems to be for other people.

i love it when people can exchange opinions and disagree without calling each other retards. makes conversations so much more interesting than cock contests.

Paulo Coelho