"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, Dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, Angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night..."

So begins Howl, one of 20th century's most celebrated poems. From the 1950s through the '60s American poet Allen Ginsberg (1926-97) doped frequently to induce visionary awareness in the company of his legendary friends - Lucien Carr, William S Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and young novelist John Clellon Holmes.

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