eBook Jack Kerouac: Collected Poems (LOA #231) (Library of America Jack Kerouac Edition) download

Old poems new ink
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Delight at the door

While I just got my copy of the Library of America KEROUAC COLLECTED POEMS, I believe I can comment on the collection because I have read most of the poems more than once and over a period of years. I am excited to have all of Kerouac's poetry in one volume, especially the poems that have been unavailable or very hard to find.

American Library produces books that feel good in the hand, are easy on the eyes, and are well edited. This volume was produce with exceptionally loving care.

I first read MEXICO CITY BLUES in 1968 while I was living in Colonia Hipódromo Condesa in Mexico City. I was only a couple of miles from where Kerouac lived while he was writing his blues. I was living a very Beat life at the time.

When I was a kid I think I wanted to be a Beatnik poet/artist, but of course, I was a few years too young. By the time Time Magazine picked up on the term "Beat" (coined by Kerouac) the movement was all but over (check out [...])--the activism of the 1960s was coming on stage. What Kerouac meant "beat" was the exhausted feeling young men of his generation felt after all the hardships of the Great Depression and WWII. These guys were physically and spiritually beat.

Kerouac was my mother's age. Because I was too young to be a Beatnik (though I think I have become more Beat over the years) I was also too old to really be a hippy. After I got back from Mexico people who saw me certainly thought I was a hippy, but my intellectual heart was with the Beats, or the near Beats like Kenneth Patchen.

Kerouac's poetry is a goof, a spontaneous life-energy, a bright bubble in time. There is no need for me to go into detail about his poetry. Whole books, some very worthwhile (for example A Map of Mexico Ctiy Blues, Jack Kerouac as Poet, by James T. Jones, Southern Illinois University Press, 1992), as well as many articles and talks (available on YouTube), which go to all aspects of Kerouac's poets. There is no substitute for the poetry itself, and the COLLECTED POEMS make it all available.

As an aspiring poet in high school I wore out a Viking Portable Library edition of Leaves of Grass. It is my sincere hope that somewhere a young poet, or poets, will get hold of Kerouac's COLLECTED POEMS and not let go until all the pages are dog-eared, the covers sweat stained and the margins full of scribbled ideas for other poems.

Kerouac put his life into his words and his words have meaning.

A wonderful collection. Well organized. It us great to have access to all of Jack Kerouac poetic genius in one place.

Being given as a gift but based on content expect it will be well received. very reasonable price for content

a classic great book

I would like to get a copy of " On The Road " in the American Classics" series when I can afford one. American Classics are great books with readable sharp clear text! Thanks to Amazon.

wow!!!

To coincide with the 50th anniversary of the first publication of "On the Road" In September, 1957, the Library of America published in September, 2007 a volume of Jack Kerouac's (1922 -- 1969) "Road Novels". The Library of America has now, five years later, published a second large volume of Kerouac: the first collected edition of the poetry of the legendary "Beat" writer.

Douglas Brinkley of Tulane University edited the volume of Road Novels while Marilene Phipps-Kettlewell has edited this new collection of Kerouac's poetry. Phipps-Kettlewell is a painter, poet, and writer educated in Haiti and France. She has become an American citizen and lives in Massachusetts. She shares with Kerouac a French heritage, a Catholic background, and an immersion when young in Buddhism and Eastern philosophy. In connection with the publication of this volume Phipps-Kettlewell offered the following comments on the importance of Kerouac's poetry.

"Kerouac's poems still speak to us because he did undress for us, in order to reach this element of Soul that we all share, this universal experience of being alive, the human abandonment, the rage, the fear, the pain: the desire to partake of the goodness that we encounter all too rarely, and which we could distribute more selflessly if it weren't for the rage, the fear, the pain - we recognize it all in Kerouac's poems, we empathize with him while being moved."

Most LOA volumes are sparingly edited. In this volume of Kerouac, however, Phipps-Kettlewell plays an important creative role. The volume begins with her extensive introduction : "Jack Kerouac, in his Own Words" It consists of short, well-chosen quotations from Kerouac's writings, most of which are derived from this volume, together with Phipps-Kettlewell's ongoing commentary. Each section is introduced by an appropriate heading as the reader learns about Kerouac's life, his understanding of his mission as a writer, his religious searchings, writing style, struggles with alcoholism, influence, and more. This introduction is a moving introduction to Kerouac and the poetry which follows.

The volume includes 700 pages of Kerouac's published seven books of poetry: "Mexico City Blues", "The Scripture of Golden Eternity", the "Book of Blues", "Pomes all Sizes", "Old Angel Midnight", "Desolation Pops", and the "Book of Haikus" together with a large collection of Uncollected Poems. With small exceptions, the poems included have been previously published, but they are gathered together in one volume for the first time.

Kerouac wrote prolifically, and the style of his poetry resists easy summarization. He is best remembered for his spontaneous, free-flowing poems, but some of his poetry is carefully thought through and controlled. In much of his poetry, with "Blues" in the volume title, Kerouac set out to capture the swing and drive of the bop music he loved so well. He also wrote prose poems, religious poems, songs, works in what appear to be traditional stanzas, and, importantly, works drawing on Japanese haiku.

Kerouac was a notoriously erratic and inconsistent writer. Within each book of poems, the reader will frequently find expressive, thoughtful poetry commingled side-by-side with works which appear ranting, slapdash, or unreadable. Kerouac wrote much, was not afraid to experiment, and fought against his demons of substance use and alcohol. The reader of this volume will wade through an amount of poor writing among much that is worthwhile. There is excellent writing in each book, with the possible exception of Kerouac's long free-flow poem "Old Angel Midnight." Kerouac reportedly realized the unsuccessful character of this lengthy improvisatory work with which I struggled in vain.

The strongest work in this collection is the short prose-poem "The Scripture of the Golden Eternity" written in 1956. This work is Kerouac's highly personal expression of his eclectic religious mysticism derived from both Buddhism and Catholicism that informs all his writing. The work is divided into 66 paragraphs. Here is paragraph 36 which captures the content and style of this religious-philosophical poem:

"Give a gift to your brother, but there's no gift to compare with the giving of assurance that he is the golden eternity. The true understanding of this would bring tears to your eyes. The other shore is right here, forgive and forget, protect and reassure. Your tormentors will be purified. Raise thy diamond hand. Have faith and wait. The course of your days is a river rumbling over your rocky back. You're sitting at the bottom of the world with a head of iron. Religion is thy sad heart. You're the golden eternity and it must be done by you. And means only one thing: Nothing -Ever-Happened. This is the golden eternity."

There is also a religiously-themed collection of prose poems titled "Psalms" in the Uncollected Works of the volume.

The collections of haiku influenced poems in "Desolation Pops" and the "Book of Haiku" are simple and eloquent. They advanced the use of this deceptively simple form in the United States and will reward reading. The selection of uncollected haikus at the end of the volume is less uniformly good. Kerouac did not publish them for a reason.

The several selections of "Blues" poems and the works included in "Pomes all Sizes" are mixed. "Mexico City Blues" survived a rocky publication history and a scathing initial review to become an almost iconic collection of Beat poetry. The volume reflects Kerouac's understanding of Buddhism, his reflections on his family history, his struggle with drugs and much else. The poems in the "Book of Blues" are also mixed and varied. The best of them give a sense of the street life in the places where they were written, including San Francisco, the Bowery, and Greenwich Village.

Literary works might be included in a series such as the Library of America either for their own literary merit or for illustrating an important historical movement in American letters. Kerouac's poems deserve inclusion on both grounds. His poetry is uneven but lasting. The Library of America and Phipps-Kettlewell deserve thanks for this excellent volume.

Robin Friedman