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Best known for his “Legend of Duluoz” novels, Jack Kerouac is also an important poet. In the eight poems collected in Book of Blues, Kerouac writes from the heart of experience in the music of language, employing the same instrumental blues form that he used to fullest effect in Mexico City Blues, his largely unheralded classic of postmodern literature.
“In my system, the form of blues choruses is limited by the small page of the breastpocket notebook in which they are written, like the form of a set number of bars in a jazz blues chorus, and so sometimes the word-meaning can carry from one chorus into another, or not, just like the phrase-meaning can carry harmonically from one chorus to another, or not, in jazz, so that, in these blues as in jazz, the form is determined by time, and by the musician’s spontaneous phrasing & harmonizing with the beat of time as if waves & waves on by in measured choruses.”—Jack Kerouac
These poems include:
• San Francisco Blues
• Richmond Hill Blues
• Bowery Blues
• MacDougal Street Blues
• Desolation Blues
• Orizaba 210 Blues
• Orlanda Blues
• Cerrada Medellin Blues
Edited by Kerouac himself, Book of Blues is an exuberant foray into language and consciousness, rich with imagery, propelled by rhythm, and based in a reverent attentiveness to the moment.
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Creators
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Series
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Publisher
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Release date
September 1, 1995 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781101548806
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781101548806
- File size: 280 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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September 4, 1995
The form of these eight long, previously unpublished poems written between 1954 and 1961, is, Kerouac writes, ``limited by the small page of the breastpocket notebook in which they were written.'' Each poem is actually a series of ``blues choruses,'' and they leap with drunkenly self-centered themes and wordplay, laced with some vivid, subjective observations of street scenes, as in Canto Uno of ``MacDougal Street Blues'': ``I mean sincerely/ naive sailors buying prints/ Women with red banjos/ On their handbags... They don't even listen to me when/ I try to tell them they will die.'' Girls, nonsense and the craft of writing are topics that figure prominently. Like all of Kerouac's work, these choruses live or die with the poet's enthusiasm, sometimes sunk in navel-gazing, sometimes stunning in their inspired leaps between images or thoughts. They beg to be read aloud and, like the jazz they are meant to reflect, some sections really swing while others are just keeping time. -
September 15, 1995
Kerouac's poetry is oddly appealing, even when it isn't very good, which is often in this collection of "blues"--sequences of song-poems rooted in urban locales that range from San Francisco to Mexico City. The given limitation of each short poem is the size of a page in the poet's tiny notebook; in each sequence, a thread is carried over from one poem to the next, like song verses or diary entries interrupted by drink or sleep. Best known, of course, for his 1957 novel, On the Road, Kerouac always seems to be on the move. From the Bowery to Mexico City, he sketches what he sees: his vision is permeated with booze, suffering, and an admirable drive to get it all down on paper. His faith in the redemptive act of writing is particularly refreshing at this time of conservative backlash against the arts. These previously unpublished poems annoy and amuse and occasionally relax into beauty: "And raindrops/that don't know/You've been deceived/Slide on iron/Raggedly gloomy." For subject collections.--Ellen Kaufman, Dewey Ballantine Law Lib., New York
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