Allen Ginsberg, the celebrated poet, counterculture icon, and out gay man, died 25 years ago, on April 5, 1997.  In a recent interview, the musician Patti Smith described Ginsberg’s final days. Confined to bed, she recalled, he listened to Big Mama Thornton while the composer Philip Glass and the poet’s lifelong companion, Peter Orlovsky, kept … Continue reading Allen Ginsberg was a political poet