Conditions
An apparently unread copy in perfect condition.
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Conditions
An apparently unread copy in perfect condition.
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).
This description may be from another edition of this product.If you read Kerouac's Pomes All Sizes you can find out what lapis lazuli is....
You will not understand Kerouac's writing style by reading "On the Road" or "Dharma Bums." To really dig what he was getting at you have to read his "Belief & Technique in Modern Prose" then read some stuff like "pomes all sizes," "old angel midnight," "visions of cody," "mexico city blues" etc. "Pomes all sizes" is an incredible book, full of astonishing pomes by one of the most important literary innovators of the 20th century, & along with "some of the dharma" it's kerouac's most personal book (but far, far, far more readable than "some of the dharma," which I would only recommend you read after reading everything else kerouac has ever written). Yes, there's lots of silly fragments and intoxicated sketches (where else do you find a kerouac pome written while on morphine or goofballs), but you gotta see Kerouac's style values spontaneity over crafted work, so it is these unpretentious, unselfconscious pomes that are among his greatest accomplishments. This slim volume is jam-packed with mind blowing pomes: "Mexican Loneliness," "How to Meditate," "The Moon," "Skid Row Wine," "Long Island Chinese Poem Rain," "Silly Goofball Pomes," "God," "Bowery Blues," and dozens of haikus... Yes, the book is inconsistent at times, but after all it is selections from his private notebooks -- and what a rare treat to be invited to spy into a great writer's "secret scribbled notebooks and wild typewritten pages." If you do not dig this book then you do not dig Kerouac. Nuff said.
A brillant poetry readerMeant to be read aloud and sung rhythmically.Kerouac is known for on the road but this books is at least as brillant.Also read "The Dharma Bums" which is a tremendous book about his belief in Buddhism on a much different road.
Outstanding. Kerouac's claim to fame is inovative form, but here there is much content, as well.
That is the central question to this collection of poems. All of them seem to be intoned with a sense of intentionally attacking the sacred tradition of being serious about poetry. And yet, some end up with beautiful moments and insights. And even if not that, there is still the vibration of enjoying life in an almost chaotic fusion of urge and meditation. Poems range from containing only one line ("I am God"), to pages of what seems to alternately be wandering drivel and intentional questioning of something that Jack seems to see but the reader quite doesn't. Overall, this is a MUST READ for those who like Kerouac. Specifically, at least two poems seem to be inherent to the creation of at least two books (On the Road and Dharma Bums). The Gary Snyder Haikus are downright hilarious in my mind, and capture perfectly that Zen Beatist sense of overindulged mentality in an underindulged world.
