Poet Allen Ginsburg Has Terminal Cancer

Allen Ginsberg, a founding member of the beat generation of writers, has been diagnosed with terminal liver cancer, his doctor and friend said on Thursday.

The 70-year-old poet is being cared for in his Manhattan apartment, unavailable for comment, Bill Morgan, his friend and archivist, told The Associated Press on Thursday.

“He’s a Buddhist, and he’s practicing Buddhist meditation,” Morgan said. “He’s working on a lot of poems, talking to old friends. He’s in very good spirits. He wants to write poetry and finish his life’s work.”

Ginsberg has had chronic hepatitis for many years, which led to cirrhosis that was first diagnosed nine years ago, according to Dr. David J. Clain of Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan, who made the cancer diagnosis.

“Curative treatment is not possible because of the extent of the cancer in the liver,” Clain said in a statement to The Associated Press.

Ginsberg first drew national attention when he published “Howl and Other Poems” in 1956.

“Poetry’s role is to provide spontaneous individual candor as distinct from manipulators and brainwash,” Ginsberg told the Hungry Mind Review’s Jim Moore last year.

Ginsberg’s latest work was “Selected Poems, 1947-1995” published last year by Harper Collins.