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 . His collection The Fall of America shared the annual U.S. National Book Award for Poetry in 1974 .