The poem was deemed as being obscene and Ginsberg was tried for its content, though he was vindicated once the presiding judge ruled the work had merit.

'Howl' was an eye-opening work in its explorations of sexuality, anguish and social issues in non-traditional poetic form, relying on a freewheeling mix of influences. Then in 1955, Ginsberg read excerpts from his poem 'Howl' at a gallery, which became a key manifesto of the Beat Generation and was published the following year by City Lights Bookstore in the form of Howl and Other Poems.

It was also in the Bay Area where Ginsberg met model Peter Orlovsky, who would become his companion. In 1954, Ginsberg moved to San Francisco and became part of the countercultural gathering that would come to be known as the Beat Movement, which used a number of artistic and sensory modes to eschew rigid rules of society. Upon his release, he started to study under poet William Carlos Williams and worked for a time at a Manhattan ad agency. To avoid jail time, Ginsberg pleaded insanity, spending time in the university's mental health facilities. Ginsberg graduated from Columbia in 1948, but in the following year was involved as an accomplice in a robbery. Ginsberg started to focus on his writing during the mid-1940s while also exploring his attraction to men. Burroughs, who would all become literary icons of a revolutionary cultural movement. While there he met former Columbia student Jack Kerouac and William S. The young Ginsberg, who kept a journal from his pre-teen years and took to the poetry of Walt Whitman in high school, went on to attend Columbia University. His mother Naomi had immigrated from Russia to the states while his father Louis was a poet and teacher. Irwin Allen Ginsberg was born on June 3, 1926, in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in the city of Paterson. Allen Ginsberg was one of the founding fathers of the Beat Generation with his revolutionary poem 'Howl.' Ginsberg was a prolific writer who also championed gay rights and anti-war movements, protesting the Vietnam War and coining the phrase 'Flower Power.' Even with his countercultural background, he became recognized as one of American's foremost writers and artistic icons.

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