Beat movement icon and visionary poet, Allen Ginsberg broke boundaries with his fearless, pyrotechnic verse. This new collection brings together the famous poems that made his name as a defining figure of the counterculture. They include the apocalyptic Howl, which became the subject of an obscenity trial when it was first published in 1956; the moving lament for his dead mother, Kaddish; the searing indictment of his homeland, America; and the confessional Mescaline. Dark, ecstatic and rhapsodic, they show why Ginsberg was one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century.