In 2000, veteran rock 'n' roller Lou Reed, legendary director Robert Wilson, and a cast of singers and actors premiered Reed's musical POEtry in Hamburg's Thalia Theater.

An ambitious combination of Edgar Allan Poe's poems and stories and Reeds reinterpretations of same (with a few classic Reed songs such as "Perfect Day" and "The Bed" integrated for good measure, POEtry bridged the centuries to provide a unique vision of beauty and horror for the dawning 21st century.

In 2003, Reed released (under the title The Raven) a double CD reprising the musical, featuring an all-star cast of singers and actors including Steve Buscemi, David Bowie, Laurie Anderson. Willem Dafoe, and the Blind Boys of Alabama, as well as an edited single-CD version focusing on the songs.

Now, for the definitive book version compiling the songs, verses and narratives that comprise POEtry/The Raven, Reed has personally commissioned legendary Italian illustrator and cartoonist Lorenzo Mattotti (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Stigmata) to visualize this extraordinary collaboration. Mattotti's vivid, abstracted and enigmatic artwork brings out all the terror and beauty of this centuries-spanning masterwork.

For our edition of this book, we enlisted Grammy Award-nominated designer Jesse LeDoux to create the striking jacket design.

Download a 16-page PDF excerpt (2.2 MB) which includes the Table of Contents and Reed's foreword, and read our exclusive interview with Lorenzo Mattotti.

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Praise for Lorenzo Mattotti's Stigmata:

"Wondrous... The reader can feel the main character's pain and redemption through Mattotti's raging fury of intense linework... A moving and thoroughly modern morality play." – Paul Gravett

"This Italian graphic novel is as intense and grim as it gets, though through the fury and darkness, it eventually reveals itself as a tale of redemption. [...] Mattotti render's screenwriter Piersanti's confessional poeticisms with a beautiful fury." – John Seven, Worcester Magazine

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