Allen Ginsberg was one of the most politically engaged writers of his era, with a widespread social and cultural impact that was rare for a poet of his or any generation. In this volume, Eliot Katz provides a readable yet scholarly look at Ginsberg’s most influential poems and explores the varied and inventive ways that he turned his political ideas and perceptions into powerful poetry. While there have been some important biographies and other books looking at Ginsberg’s life and work, this is the first full-length volume focusing primarily on how his writing works as political poetry and on Ginsberg’s extraordinary influence on political culture over the ensuing decades. As a longtime poet and activist himself, as well as a friend of Ginsberg’s who worked with him on a number of poetry and activist endeavors, Katz brings a unique personal, political, and literary perspective to this project. This book—including its chapter on “Howl,” which offers an astute and original guide to reading Ginsberg’s most celebrated poem—will be of interest to students and scholars studying Ginsberg’s poetry in college classrooms, as well as to general readers and writers who enjoy Ginsberg’s work. Eliot Katz has put together a valuable and extensive investigation into the role of politics in the life and work of an important poet, adding an important dimension to Beat Generation scholarship. His book is both detailed and yet accessible, and will doubtless be useful to students and fans of the Beat Generation. – Ragazine Eliot Katz’s book The Poetry and Politics of Allen Ginsberg deserves to be part of any academic reading list. It is a labor of love, intelligence and humility. – Marc Olmsted, Sensitive Skin Magazine This book is an excellent look at Ginsberg and the world he saw around him. – Evil Cyclist Book Blog In this perfectly researched and immensely readable book, Katz has tackled this important aspect of Ginsberg’s work and reminds people in this apathetic and polarized world that raising our voices and becoming involved can make a difference. Ginsberg never shied away from addressing issues head-on and Katz’s book makes his timeless ideas shine through with crystalline brilliance. – Bill Morgan The Poetry and Politics of Allen Ginsberg is the most engaging and rigorous analysis of Ginsberg’s political poetry yet attempted. – Kurt Hemmer “Eliot Katz has created an insightful and thought-provoking book [...] very well researched” – Poetry Spoken Here podcast Katz’s The Poetry and Politics of Allen Ginsberg is perhaps the most crucial work published since Ginsberg’s death - Jim Cohn, Big Bridge Katz’s analysis is readable and enjoyable while offering a scholarly view of Ginsberg’s most influential poems - Rain Taxi Review of Books "The Poetry and Politics of Allen Ginsberg is a full-developed analysis of Ginsberg's political poetry" - Journal of Beat Studies, Vol. 6 Eliot Katz is the author of seven books of poetry, including Unlocking the Exits (1999) and Love, War, Fire, Wind: Looking Out from North America's Skull (2009). His first full-length poetry book, Space and Other Poems for Love, Laughs, and Social Transformation was published in 1990, with introductions by Allen Ginsberg and Amiri Baraka, and a front cover drawing by Leon Golub. Katz is also the author of two prose e-books, Three Radical Poets: Tributes to Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Adrienne Rich (2013) and The Moonlight of Home and Other Stories of Truth and Fiction (2013). He was a coeditor, with Allen Ginsberg and Andy Clausen, of Poems for the Nation (2000), a collection of contemporary political poems that Ginsberg was compiling in the 18 months before his death in 1997. A cofounder, with Danny Shot, and former coeditor of Long Shot literary journal, he guest-edited Long Shot's final issue, a "Beat Bush issue" released in Spring 2004. Katz's poems are included in the anthologies: Poetry After 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets; Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust, 2nd ed.; The World the 60s Made: Politics and Culture in Recent America; Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe; Blue Stones and Salt Hay: An Anthology of Contemporary New Jersey Poets; Identity Lessons: Contemporary Writing About Learning to Be American; Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam; Confronting Capitalism: Dispatches from a Global Movement; and In Defense of Mumia. His long essay, "Radical Eyes: Political Poetics and 'Howl'," is included in the prose collection, The Poem That Changed America: "Howl" Fifty Years Later. Of his piece in that collection, the San Francisco Chronicle's reviewer, Allan Jalon, wrote that Katz's essay "gives the book its intellectual core." Katz is also coeditor of a bilingual poetry anthology published in France in 1997, entitled Changing America: Contemporary U.S. Poems of Protest, 1980-1995. A one-time student (Naropa Institute, 1980) and a longtime friend of Allen Ginsberg's, Ginsberg called Katz "another classic New Jer