Ginsberg, Allen | “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness...”— Nathan Zach's copy with the author's extensive annotations

Ginsberg, Allen

Howl and Other Poems. San Francisco: City Lights, 1959

Booklet of 22 bifolia, stapled (158 x 127 mm). Eighth printing, annotations to title-page and margins in pen, 12 pages in total. Publisher's grey-lettered black wrappers, title on wrap-around strip laid down, priced 75 cents on rear cover; wear to spine and covers, lightly toned.

A fascinating survival—Nathan Zach's copy of Howl with Ginsberg's extensive manuscript annotations.

Ginsberg draws a skull and crossbones with a raincloud above in the "O" of Howl. Ginsberg referenced skeletons in his life and work; he was kicked out of Columbia for drawing a skull and crossbones in his dormitory window (he refers to this in Howl, "publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull"), and later in life performed The Ballad of the Skeletons with Paul McCartney.

Nathan Zach is considered one of the most important Israeli poets of the country's history. He translated Allen Ginsberg's poetry including Kaddish and other poems, into Hebrew. Indeed, much of the annotations "translate" Ginsberg's references, for example "Paradise Alley"—"Lower East Side", "Peyote"—"Narcotic cactus", "fairies"—"homosexual", "CCNY"—"College of City of NY" and "habit", "junk"—both "heroin". Ginsberg took the 1984 portrait of Zach that was used for his autobiography.

Ginsberg's volume includes the landmark poem Howl ("I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness") and A Supermarket in California among others. He first read the title poem at the now famous Six Gallery reading in San Francisco, alongside Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, and Philip Lamantia. The book's publication was subject to a long obscenity trial due to the explicit references towards drugs and homosexual sex, and 520 copies of it were seized by US Customs and San Francisco police upon their importation into the country (the book was printed in Holloway, North London).

A brilliant association between two great Jewish poets.

REFERENCE:

Academy of American Poets; Villa, Doveglion: Collected Poems, ed. John Edwin Cowen

PROVENANCE:

Nathan Zach (1930-2020)