Alan Ginsberg. Easily almost every single person who got upset when I said I didn't like his poetry have never read anything he wrote but "Howl" back when they were in their teens or during their college years and never read a single thing of his since then, including "Howl" of which they might recognize the first few words when someone on the radio is commemorating the day of the court case or his birth day or some anniversary of an event ending in a 0 or a 5 and not much more.
That's it, that and they know they're supposed to think he's a great poet even though they prove how much they don't love his junk by never having read any more of it than I just said. Of course, you can say that about most of the other "great writers" they get upset with you about dissing.
Oh, they might look up his excuse for joining NAMBLA, which I also mentioned, the all purpose excuse of "supporting free-speech" as if anyone with a brain in their head would believe you join a group that wants to make it legal for adult men to rape very young children out of a devotion to freedom of speech and not what the group's stated purpose and unstated purpose is. If you believe that you'll believe anything.
And you do because you know you're supposed to pretend to believe it because Alan Ginsberg was a great poet, though you haven't looked at a thing he wrote since you got out of the last English class you got assigned to look at Howl for, and you couldn't finish the tedious thing because what was so racy then is made tedious by the ubiquity of porn now. Admit it, you like almost everyone else that this would piss off because I dissed the great poet never read poetry because you'd rather watch TV and they don't do poetry on American TV.
Alan Ginsberg is now an official part of the mid-brow, upper middle-class, college-credentialed, white-collar classes degraded idea of kulcha. Probably the irony of that is the only thing of value he contributed to culture.
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