Howl and other poems by Allen Ginsberg. (With a drawing and inscription by Ginsberg)

San Francisco : City Lights Books, 1969. Twenty-first printing. Series: The Pocket Poets Series number four. Duodecimo (155 x 120 mm), original black-and-white printed wraps with black lettering (sunned, some light edge wear, original owner’s name in biro to front); inscribed by Ginsberg on the title-page in black pen, for University of Maine academic, author and poet Sanford Phippen (1942- ): ‘Allen Ginsberg, for Sanford Phippen, 3/23/88’, with a hand-drawn illustration by Ginsberg of a flower, serpent, stars and moon, and the initials ‘AH’ inside the “O” of “HOWL” and at upper left (Phippen’s original ownership inscription dated 1969 is at upper right); internally excellent, a good presentation copy of the poet’s most famous work.

The intials ‘AH’ in Ginsberg’s drawing refer to Albert Hofmann, the Swiss scientist known as the father of the drug LSD. Ginsberg was famously an enthusiastic advocate of the drug, announcing in 1966 to a room full of Unitarian ministers in Boston that ‘everybody who hears my voice’ should ‘try the chemical LSD at least once’. Ginsberg was convinced that psychedelics were a vital tool for investigating the powers of the mind and the creative process.