We are a legend, invisible but
legendary, as prophesied.
Allen Ginsberg

This is a small book, almost small enough for your pocket. Inside covers a wide range of poems. It is more than Ginsberg and Kerouac, but they are included. I recognized Leroi Jones' work, but as his later name Amiri Baraka. Twenty-eight poets make up this collection and the diversity of mood and messages are great. There is the gloom of the world and life without a future. The cold reclining on the steps of the library to a warmer personal type of poetry.

There is a bit of hopelessness in the series.

-- There are
enough fascists &
enough socialists
on both sides
so that no one will lose the war.
Diana Di Prima

My address book is full
of RIPs
Jack Kerouac

balanced to some extent with:

And here I am, the
center of all beauty!
writing these poems!
Imagine!
Frank O'Hara

The Lenore Kandel selection was enough for me to purchase her complete works. Although all poems may not appeal to all people, this is a good sampling of the period and will certainly open doors to those looking a new experience. ( )

The best thing about Beat Poets, edited by Carmela Ciuraru is that it reminds us of beats and near-beats who are now less remembered than the canonical few. I was happy to discover or rediscover poets like Marie Ponsot, Barbara Guest, and Denise Levertov (so much for poor old Kerouac's description of what the Beats were doing as "the pure masculine urge to freely sing"), and to be reminded that Gregory Corso was more—a lot more—than a loud and irritating drunk. The selection of the poems is often odd—none of Gary Snyder's best, for example, and only part of "Howl"—and there is no attempt to provide readers with even the barest details of when the poems were written or who the poets were (something one might be forgiven for expecting in a book called not "Beat Poetry" but "Beat Poets"). The Beat Book is a better, more richly contextualized, and less idiosyncratic collection.

This book doesn't give nearly enough of a sampling of beat poetry, and it leaves out some of the best poems. ( )