The poem that ended American poetry's post-war decorum in one apocalyptic rush. "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness" announced the Beat generation's program: jazz-influenced long lines, Whitman's democratic cataloguing turned to expose the machinery of conformist destruction. The 1957 obscenity trial made it famous; the poem earns its fame. One of the few genuinely world-changing American poems.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.