Allen Ginsberg is significant not only as a poet but also as a public personality, a social critic, and a cultural phenomenon. Ginsberg's artistic reputation should be ensured for the future by "Howl" and "Kaddish," his best-known and most substantial poems. The power, the spiritual depth, and the bold technical experimentation of these two pieces are sufficient to establish their creator as a poet of major rank. Moreover, while Ginsberg has perhaps published too much verse that does not represent his remarkable talent at its best, there remains in his various collections of poetry a large body of highly effective and thoroughly distinctive work. Yet Ginsberg's prominence since the appearance of Howl and Other Poems in 1956 is not to be explained simply by his literary achievement. From that time onward, the poet has become a nationally recognized spokesman for innovation and dissent in a variety of forms. Thus...