The Portable Beat Reader
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Book Summary Information
Editor: Ann ChartersEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-07-29
ISBN: 0142437530
Number of pages: 688
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Book Reviews of The Portable Beat Reader
Book Review: Sweet Beat Heat
Summary: 5 Stars
this book is like
WOW
KA-POW
a sock in the gut
a kick in the butt-
on fly jeans that were
often worn by torn men
and broken women
who called themselves
beat
this bible is a meet-
ing ground of sound tribal mind
open heart prose
souls that want to rise with
those that have al-
ready rose
each chapter contains
some laughter
about how things came together
during that magical time
of free
verse
and holy ryhme
ginsberg
kerouac
burroughs
ferlinghetti
and more
dissolving their flesh
exposing their spirit driven core
oh, i love to read and bleed this book dry
i love to cry with sad saints
and be healed by words revealed
in the city we are
"constantly risking absurdity and death"
but we
who
are brave
and
not
a slave to tyrants
can freely take a chance
and take a new breath
and dance
with Holy Men
gone
bye.
Peace & Blessings,
john, 'the Light Coach'
Summary of The Portable Beat Reader
Beginning in the late 1940's, American literature discovered a four-letter word, and the word was "beat." Beat as in poverty and beatitude, ecstasy and exile. Beat was Jack Kerouac touring the American road in prose as fast and reckless as a V-8 Chevy. It was the junk-sick surrealism of William Burroughs; the wild, Whitmanesque poetry of Allen Ginsberg; and the lumberjack Zen of Gary Snyder.
The Portable Beat Reader collects the most significant writing of these and fellow members (and spiritual descendants) of the Beat Generation, including Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso, Diane di Prima, Bob Dylan, Leroi Jones, and Michael McClure. In poetry, fiction, essays, song lyrics, letters, and memoirs, it captures the triumphant rudeness, energy, and exhilaration of a movement that swept through American letters with hurricane force.
The Portable Beat Reader is an excellent and thorough study of the Beat Generation, compiled and edited by Ann Charters, biographer of Jack Kerouac and one of our most notable experts on Beat literature and ideas. This lively work of scholarship goes deeply into the history of the Beat movement, investigating events such as the discovery (by writer William Burroughs) of the word beat to describe this literary generation. The reader includes essays on all the major prose and poetry writers, such as Allen Ginsberg, and offers rare insight into the literary-historical context of the movement.
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