Publishers are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the publication of counterculture icon Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" with a slew of new books. Many were written with the help of Bill Morgan, Ginsberg's friend and literary archivist, who seems to be a one-man Ginsberg industry this year.
| Illuminated Poems by Allen Ginsberg and Eric Drooker (Thunder's Mouth, Sept. [reprint]) | Collected Poems, 1947—1997 by Allen Ginsberg (HarperCollins, Oct.) | Howl by Allen Ginsberg (Harper Perennial, Oct.) | I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg by Bill Morgan (Viking, Oct.) | The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice ed. by Juanita Lieberman-Plimpton and Bill Morgan (Da Capo, Oct.) | Howl on Trial by Bill Morgan (City Lights, Nov.) | |
| Who it's for: | New York gift buyers, who'll love Drooker's visceral scenes of the city | Completists or newbies who don't already own volumes featuring classics like "Howl" | Poetry students and others interested in deconstructing Ginsberg's seminal work line-by-line | Poetics students; readers who collect American literary bios | Fans who want to read Ginsberg's earliest journals and poems | Lefties fired up over obscenity issues and censorship of literary works |
| Why it matters: | Drooker's art gives primitive life to the text, which includes two poems available only in this collection. | The last edition of Ginsberg's collected poems ended in 1980; this complete collection includes 17 more years of his work. | A historic document, this is the original draft facsimile, transcript and variant versions, fully annotated by Ginsberg. | Morgan provides a more complete picture than other books have of Ginsberg's lifelong search for love. | The journals—covering Ginsberg's formative years— are so candid, Ginsberg insisted they be published only after his death. | Never-before-published correspondence between Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti, Kerouac and others provides invaluable commentary on Ginsberg's arrest. |
| Quote: | "I was flattered that so radical an artist of later generations found the body of my poetry still relevant, even inspiring." —AG | "Collected Poems may be read as a lifelong poem including history, wherein things are symbols of themselves." —AG | "This [is]... a handbook for composition of one kind of expansive poetry: its process, basic sorting and judgment...." —AG | "Allen Ginsberg deserves to be considered one of the best examples of the true American hero." —Bill Morgan | "There were many tragedies, deaths, and broken hearts along the way, all of which Ginsberg had carefully noted...."—Bill Morgan | "I knew the world had been waiting for this poem, for this apocalyptic message to be articulated." —Lawrence Ferlinghetti |
