Customer Reviews

City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology

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This is a pleasingly slick and blocky hardbacked volume offering a nice sampling of every single one of City Lights' pocket poet editions. But I think the selection could be better.

First, and perhaps predictably, the Beats, and above all Ginsberg, get too much space. Not only does Ginsberg have multiple books in the series, he often gets many poems from each book, while other poets only get one. It's very hard to get a real sense for poets who are new to you--and thus to decide if you want to explore them further--from a single poem. Some of the imbalances are mind-boggling. Corso gets one sole poem, while Kerouac (not a BAD poet, but certainly not a great one) gets eight?!

Second, Ferlinghetti seems undecided on the nature of the volume--is it supposed to represent the best poems in the series, or is it a nostalgic history trip? This is most evident in the selections from Ginsberg--which often appear to have been picked simply because they offer explicit or implicit elegies for each of Ginsberg's famous Beat pals. Many of the Ginsberg selections are pretty disposable--yet his best poems, "America" and "Supermarket in California," are left out, and only part II and the footnote of "Howl" are included.

That said, it's nice to get an easy introduction to City Light's offerings beyond the Beats, that's really the book's best feature. There are many wonderful poems by Kenneth Patchen, a perfect pick of O'Hara, as well as Prevert, Nicanor Parra, Norse, even Picasso, Brecht, and Mayakovsky. It makes me wish they had just trimmed the beats out entirely--or given them their own separate City Lights anthology--so we could get a better taste of the others.

I think this book is quite a bit overrated. People speak about this book gushing with sappiness. I guess I should make it clear at this point that I'm not really a big fan of this style of poetry. I think beatnik prose can be pretty good and pretty poetic, but I tend to be a little leary about beatnik literature that is explicitly poetry. Make no mistake about it, there is some good material in here, including some of Mr. Ferlinghetti's stuff and some of Kerouac's and Ginsberg's typical stuff. However, overall, I wouldn't say I'm too impressed.

A wonderful and portable collection of poems about being on the go and experiencing life to its fullest.

Captures the true beat essence in delightful and sundry ways.

A rare joy in the world of poetry.