Bill Morgan took University of Pittsburgh poetry students inside the world of Allen Ginsberg last week -- and some of it wasn't very pretty.

"Allen was completely uninhibited," Morgan told Lynn Emanuel's class on Monday. He's author of "I Celebrate Myself," an exhaustive biography of the Beat Generation icon,

Allen Ginsberg dances to the Grateful Dead in January 1967. Click photo for larger image.

"His bathtub was in his kitchen (of his East Village apartment) and he thought nothing of sitting there nude in the tub or walking around naked in front of guests."

Ginsberg was a libidinous chap as well, with a constant eye for attractive young men during his college tours.

"Allen believed that he did his best teaching in bed," Morgan joked.

His vertical approach was a bit of surprise, however, Emanuel reported. When he visited Pitt nearly 20 years ago to speak before an English class, he wanted to talk about Coleridge and Wordsworth, not Kerouac or Ferlinghetti, the professor said.

"He was always contrary and hated to do the expected," Morgan added. "And, he was a serious student of literature as well."

Ginsberg for years strenuously avoided reading "Howl," his landmark 1955 poem that launched the Beats into the national consciousness.

"He would only read it if he was visiting a state where he had never read 'Howl,'" Morgan said. "And, you know, it's more than a half-hour long."

Using that policy, Ginsberg managed to read "Howl" in all 50 states and a handful of foreign nations, Morgan said.

Ginsberg died in 1997 at 71, but despite his fame, he was far from being a wealthy man. He gave money away helping friends and supporting a variety of causes from Lenny Bruce to antiwar groups.

"Allen lived on practically nothing," said Morgan. "His place was rent-controlled, and he bought his clothes at thrift shops and second-hand stores. Any money he made, he gave away."

When he began a steady schedule of poetry readings in the 1950s, he refused payments, even for travel expenses, said Morgan.

"That changed by the 1960s when he realized he could use that money to support poetry groups and poets. Gap paid him $20,000 for appearing in a TV ad for chino pants and Allen gave it all away. He never took a cent."

One of his largest beneficiaries was the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute, a Buddhist-based school in Colorado where he taught for many years.

A 1972 graduate of Pitt's master's program in library science, Morgan met Ginsberg through his friend, fellow poet and publisher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He compiled the poet's bibliographies, arranged his archives and edited a collection of his journals.

He began working in earnest on the biography shortly after Ginsberg died. It was released to coincide with the 50th anniversary of "Howl's" American publication.

"In doing the research, I discovered that Allen probably knew everybody in the whole world," laughed Morgan. "This was no 'Six Degrees of Separation' story. This was maybe two degrees.

"Allen was a warm, friendly and caring man who essentially worked on one poem all of his life," his biographer said. "It turned out to be a map of his life, a map of his mind. If 100 years from now people want to know what we were thinking about, they have his work."

Does that work qualify him as a major American poet?

"I believe Allen started the balls rolling for free speech, rebellion, poetry as performance," Morgan answered, "and they haven't stopped rolling yet."