Illuminated Poems

Marking the fiftieth anniversary of “Howl,” Illuminated Poems celebrates the collaboration of two visionaries of different generations: Allen Ginsberg, the quintessential Beat and America’s best-known poet, and Eric Drooker, the New Yorker cover artist whose provocative, apocalyptic images add a new dimension and urgency to Ginsberg’s poems. Illuminated Poems contains two works only available in this volume, an introduction by Ginsberg, and thirty-four poems from 1948 through the present day, including the poem “Howl” in its entirety. Perhaps the single poem that captures the anguish and aspirations of the Beat Generation, “Howl” was originally published fifty years ago and is one of the most widely read poems of the twentieth century.