Allen Ginsberg is an artist.
Irwin Allen Ginsberg ( [ ˈɡɪnzbərɡ ] June 3 , 1926 -- April 5 , 1997 ) was an American poet of Jewish origin , and one of the leading figures of both the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the counterculture that soon would follow . Ginsberg is best known for his poem `` Howl '' , in which he denounced what he saw as the destructive forces of capitalism and conformity in the United States . Ginsberg was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1995 for his book Cosmopolitan Greetings : Poems 1986 -- 1992 .