Allen Ginsburg was born in 1926 in New Jersey. (His real name was actually Irwin- I can see why he went by Allen.) He was a Beat poet, most known for his poem “Howl”. Ginsburg’s father was a published poet and his mother had some kind of psychological issue that was never properly diagnosed. His mother’s issues (she attempted suicide several times) really inspired a lot of his work, including “Howl”.

Ginsburg went to Columbia College, where he met other Beats like Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. Jack Kerouac also introduced Ginsburg to Neil Cassidy, and they struck up a relationship, which was written about a little bit in On the Road.

One night, Ginsburg was in his room casually reading some poetry by William Blake when he claims that he suddenly heard the voice of either God or William Blake reading Blake’s poetry out loud, which lasted for several days. He says that the vision didn’t come from drug use, but he did turn to drugs to try to recreate the experience.

Ginsberg eventually met Peter Orlovsky in San Francisco, who became his lifelong partner and actually just died a few years ago. Also in San Francisco, where he had his first public performance of “Howl”. “Howl” was extremely controversial (if you read it, you’ll know exactly why) but it was also incredibly popular among the beats.

Ginsburg was kind of all over the place. At one point he was hanging out with a bunch of Beats in France, then he went to England, he dabbled in Buddhism, he helped form the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poets (aka best name for a school ever), helped run protests, and hung out with hippies in the Haight-Ashbury district.

He died from a mixture of several strokes, liver cancer, and hepatitis in 1986, surrounded by friends.

Gwendolyn Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas in 1917, but moved to Chicago with her family when she was still a new baby. She had kind of a rough time growing up. Her father was abusive and eventually died of a drug overdose, and she got suspended from several schools for being black. She eventually went to an all black school, and after that, an integrated high school. This gave her a big interest in race relations. She published her first poem at thirteen in a collection of childrens’ poems. Brooks did a lot of mentoring to young black poets, and also taught college, ran workshops for underprivileged people, and spoke at conferences. She became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize and was the Poet Laureate of Illinois. Gwendolyn Brooks used to hang out at the Golden Shovel tavern, where she came up with the idea for “we real cool”. After her death, Terrence Hayes invented a new poetic form in her honor, called the Golden Shovel form.