Beat Poets (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375413324 ISBN 13: 9780375413322

Publisher: Everyman's Library, 2002

Synopsis

This rousing anthology features the work of more than twenty-five writers from the great twentieth-century countercultural literary movement. Writing with an audacious swagger and an iconoclastic zeal, and declaiming their verse with dramatic flourish in smoke-filled cafés, the Beats gave birth to a literature of previously unimaginable expressive range.

The defining work of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac provides the foundation for this collection, which also features the improvisational verse of such Beat legends as Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, and Michael McClure and the work of such women writers as Diane DiPrima and Denise Levertov. LeRoi Jones’s plaintive “Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note” and Bob Kaufman’s stirring “Abomunist Manifesto” appear here alongside statements on poetics and the alternately incendiary and earnest correspondence of Beat Generation writers.

Visceral and powerful, infused with an unmediated spiritual and social awareness, this is a rich and varied tribute and, in the populist spirit of the Beats, a vital addition to the libraries of readers everywhere.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

An impassioned audacity distinguishes the thirty writers represented in the rousing anthology of poetry from the great 20th-century countercultural literary movement. In combining art with an unapologetic antiestablishment zeal, the Beats gave birth to a literature of previously unimaginable expressive range, fomenting an artistic revolution.
The defining work of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac provides the foundation for this collection, which also features statements on Beat poetics, selections from the alternately ardent, incendiary, and earnest correspondence of Beat Generation writers, and the improvisational verse of such Beat legends as Robert Creeley, Diane Di Prima, Gregory Corso, Denise Levertov, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Philip Whalen, Bob Kaufman, and Peter Orlovsky, along with the work of other women writers and the lesser-known poets of this school. Visceral and powerful, infused with an unmediated spiritual and social awareness, "Beat Poets is a rich and varied tribute and--in the populist spirit of the Beats--a vital addition to the libraries of readers everywhere.

About the Author

Carmela Ciuraru is the editor of the anthology First Loves: Poets Introduce the Essential Poems That Captivated and Inspired Them, and the former editor of the Journal of the Poetry Society of America. A graduate of Columbia University's School of Journalism, she lives in New York City.

About this edition

• Publisher: Everyman's Library
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0375413324
• ISBN 13: 9780375413322
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256
• Editor: Carmela Ciuraru