Customer Reviews

Beat Poets (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets)

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"Beats Poets," a snug volume of various poetry from the Beat era in the 1950s and 60s, can serve as a sampler for 28 modern influential poets.

Passages from Ginsberg's "Howl" and Corso's "Transformation & Escape" will draw you read these pieces in full. "Howl" is the highly controversial poem which challenged free speech and the definition of art.

Creeley, Jones, and O'Hara are hear, as is Lawrence Ferlinghetti, both poet and owner of the famous San Francisco bookstore "City Lights" where so much of the Beat movement originated.

Denise Levertov is notably here with five selection. Only a few Kerouac poems are published here, but his work can be easily found in larger collections.

Helping capture the Beat movement, editor Carmela Ciuraru has included "Letters, Encounters and Statements on Poetics," which is a collection of short essays by a few of Beat's major players.

I fully recommend "Beat Poets."

Anthony Trendl
editor, HungarianBookstore.com

Compiled and edited by Carmela Ciuaru, Beat Poets provides informative coverages featuring and showcasing the work of more than twenty-five poets from the Beat movement, ranging from Bob Kaufman, to Allen Ginsburg, to Diane di Prima. Rousing poems and Beat verse classics will bring back nostalgic memories for some, while introducing a whole new generation to a diverse Beat poetry drawn from the themes and concerns of a now yesteryear of the American experience.

I love to read these out loud and using my pretentious beatnik voice. I had myself and my wife in stitches reading "The Quarrel." Groovy, man! How anyone could keep a straight face while writing this stuff I don't know. It's the next best thing to REAL poetry!