Customer Reviews

Illuminated Poems

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In the tradition of William Blake, sumptuous paintings and drawings complement rather than describe the poems. Chosen by Drooker, the selections reflect the painter's political activism, but "Howl," "Sunflower Sutra," and "On Neal's Ashes" all are here, as are other lesser-known poems such as "When the Light Appears," which is featured on the Cornershop album When I Was Born for the 7th Time.

This "illuminated" book of several of Ginsberg's provocative poems is great. I teach Ginsberg, often to undergraduates in college, and students often like a visual element in lecture. This is the text, to expand your understanding of both Ginsberg's world and our own.

This book is not only a mind opener, but also an eye opener. The classic Allen Ginsberg poems are felt through another channel that is Drooker's eye catching drawings. Howl is one of my favorite poem and drawing combo where a depiction of a man injecting himself with a drug has fire rising from his back and long beast-like flesh and hair. If you like poetry and art this is one book that combinds both in matrimony.

If you are a real Ginsberg fan, you'll appreciate having this book in your collection, even if you you're not a big art lover. The art will inspire a new appreciation of the poems- and it's easier to carry than your "bible"(collected poems)! Poems inside: The Altering Eye Alters All, An Eastern Ballad, A Mad Gleam, In Death Cannot Reach What Is Most Near, Song, Lay Down Yr Mountain, Manhattan Thirties Flash, Morning, Howl, Footnote to Howl, New York Blues, Native New York, On Neal's Ashes, Punk Rock Your My Big Cry Baby, Get It?, Capital Air, Pentagon Exorcism, Love Forgiven, War Profit Litany, When The Light Appears, Tears, The Lion For Real, I'm A Prisoner of Allen Ginsberg, Fighting Phantoms Fighting Phantoms, This Form Of Life Needs Sex, Birdbrain!, American Again, New Stanzas For Amazing Grace, X-ray Manhattan, Jumping the Gun On the Sun, Rock Song, Gospel Noble Truths, The Ballad of the Skeletons, Father Death Blues, Confession Is Dream for the Soul, and my favorite, Sunflower Sutra.

i don't care for ginsberg, but drooker's work is mindblowing.
no need for drugs. just look at the pictures.

Adaptation is an art form often attempted but rarely perfected, mastered only through a certain mysterious symbiosis, a careful translation of creation to creation. More than a simple carbon-copy insta-fax, true adaptation is about instilling the tangible soul of a original into the humunculus of another medium. With the difficulty and unfathomable intimacy involved in such a process, it makes perfect sense to approach Illuminated Poems with a sense of foreboding, of tangible fear that somehow the rhythmic be-bopping beat poems of the great Ginsberg will somehow find themselves impossibly pacified, sterilized, and castrated. One look at the languid lyricism contained in both the words and images of this volume proves those reservations as gloriously unfounded. A sensuous synthesis dances from page to page as Eric Drooker and Allen Ginsberg trade messages across mediums, words swirling into pictures and back again, a heavenly tide of contemporary Blake that comprehends chaos in retrospect. The triumphs and consequences of free love, psychedelic drugs and bohemian lifedeath are laid bare in lyrics, their essences captured in captivating canvases of brilliant madness. And at the center of it all, 'Howl' uncut and complete, the single shouting synapse of a generation, screaming a semi-nostalgic SOS. A must-buy.

A great introduction to the poems of Allen Ginsberg. The illustrations are bold and arresting. Highly recommended.

This a beautiful book, that not only shares ginsbergs work but works with the images created by eric drooker to communicate the poems and songs vividly, providing candy for the eyes and mind. I'd recommend this book to anyone who enjoys ginsberg, no ginsberg collection is complete without it , in my opinion.

an excellent illustrated book of gonsberg's poems