Pomes All Sizes - Softcover

Kerouac, Jack

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0872862690 ISBN 13: 9780872862692

Publisher: City Lights Publishers, 2001

Synopsis

The original manuscript of this book, written between 1954 and 1965, has been in the safekeeping of City Lights all the years since Kerouac’s death in 1969. Reaching beyond the scope of his Mexico City Blues, here are pomes about Mexico and Tangier, Berkeley and the Bowery. Mid-fifties road poems, hymns and songs of God, drug poems, wine poems, dharma poems and Buddhist meditations. Poems to Beat friends, goofball poems, quirky haiku, and a fine, long elegy in Canuckian Child Patoi Probably Medieval . . . an English blues.” But more than a quarter of a century after it was written, Pomes of All Sizes today would seem to be more than a sum of it parts, revealing a questing Kerouac grown beyond the popular image of himself as a Beat on the Road.

"Here is a treasure, in the mainstream of American Literature . . . lovely familiar classic Kerouacism's, nostalgic gathas from 1955 Berkeley cottage days, pure sober tender Kerouac of your yore, pithy exquisite later drunken laments and bitter nuts and verses . . . to be appreciated by cognoscenti and literate strangers alike . . . ." from the Introduction by Allen Ginsberg

"Underlying this volume . . . is the drama of Kerouac the mystic, with his urge toward control, at odds with Kerouac the freewheeling Beat and, on a personal level, Kerouac the alcoholic. Yet as Ginsberg observes in his introduction, division the sense of life as "both real and dream" is the pervasive "spiritual intelligence" of the Beats. Given that, this is a perhaps ironically representative volume." Publishers Weekly

"Here in Pomes All Sizes you discover the contemplative Kerouac, musing on the quiet meaning of things or thinking of friends in other places, casting his thoughts into "little short lines" and stopping exactly where the first thought stopped. There is delight to be gained here, poetic delight and a fuller picture of the great Kerouac persona which has relentlessly been reduced over the years to the well-known caricature of the graceless drunken beatnik lout. Bullshit! Kerouac, my friends, was full of grace, and a 'great creator of forms that ultimately find expression in mores and what have you.'" John Sinclair

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) was a principal actor in the Beat Generation, and a companion of Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady in that great adventure. His books include On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Mexico City Blues, Lonesome Traveler, Visions of Cody, Scattered Poems (City Lights), and Scripture of the Golden Eternity (City Lights).

About this title

Review

3 Poem About Titles Of Novels
Airapetianz
Angel Mine
Beau Bebe
Beginning With A Few Haikus Some Of Them Addresses In The
Berkeley Song In F Major
Bowery Blues
Buddha
Bus East
Caritas
Cognac Blues
A Curse At The Devil
Drunken Scribbling Poem
Flies
Gatha
God
Goofball Blues
Goofball Sillypomes
Haiku
Haiku
Haiku Berkeley
Hitchhiker
How To Meditate
Hymn
Idiot
If I Were Jesus, God
Lady
The Last Hotel
Letter To Allen 1955
Lil Poem On Louis Ferdinand Celine
Long Island Chinese Poem Rain
Mexican Lonliness
Mexico Rooftop
The Moon
My Gang
My Views On Religion
Neal In Court
Old Western Movies
On Ether
On Waking From A Dream Of Robert Fournier
Pax
Perm
Poem
Poem
Poem
Poem
Poem
Poem
Poem Written In The Zoco Chico
Poems Of The Buddhas Of Old
Poim
Pome
Pome On Doctor Sax
Poor Sottish Kerouac
Prayer
Running Through -- Chinese Poem Song
The Shack Of Desolation
Silly Goofball Pomes: Song Of The New Chinese
Sken 3
Skid Row Wine
A Sudden Sketch Poem
Tangier Poem
The Thrashing Doves
Three Tangier Poems
To Lou Little
Two Dharma Notes
Various Little Pomes
Woman
[enlightenments]
-- Table of Poems from Poem FinderŪ

From Publishers Weekly

" 'Develop a pure / lucid mind' " instructs Kerouac in "Gatha," a poem in this miscellany of what Ginsberg ( Howl ) calls "notebook jottings and little magazine items" spanning 1954-1965. The poem's lines and title, referring to Zoroastrianism, signal the influence of Eastern philosophies on Kerouac's ( On the Road ) work. Stylistically, this influence displays itself in his uses of the verb "to be." Lines like "Enlightenment is: do what / you want / eat what there is" have a calm, decisive tone and play a defining role, as if uttered after long, disciplined meditation. Another aspect of Kerouac's style directly clashes with this emphasis on clarity, however. He free-associates into a kind of linguistic clutter: "ole Hotsatots dont footsie / down here bring my gruel, I'll / be cruel." Underlying this volume's hodgepodge, then, is the drama of Kerouac the mystic, with his urge toward control, at odds with Kerouac the freewheeling Beat and, on a personal level, Kerouac the alcoholic. Yet as Ginsberg observes in his introduction, division--the sense of life as "both real and dream"--is the pervasive "spiritual intelligence" of the Beats. Given that, this is a perhaps ironically representative volume.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: City Lights Publishers
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0872862690
• ISBN 13: 9780872862692
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 175