The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry
The Beat sensibility is alive and ranting in this bulky, multigenerational anthology of work by those who follow the off-road literary paths of Whitman and Ginsberg. Id-driven, political, and sexually explicit, these poems speak in the vernacular of the street, touting oppositional art as a weapon against poverty, corporate capitalism, discrimination, and violence. The roster of poets has to be among the strangest gathered in one volume; progenitors like Kerouac, Baraka, diPrima, etc., are interleaved with youthful urban slammers and complemented by the likes of Tupac Shakur, Tom Waits, Richard Pryor, Karen Finley, Janis Joplin, Che Guevara, James Dean, and other pop icons. The spirit of the whole affair might best be summarized by Pedro Pietri's "Telephone booth number 542": "the only way/ i know how/ to wash dishes/ is by smashing them/ against the wall!" Though this collection holds some historical and documentary interest and a few harrowing moments courtesy of Sapphire and Gerry Gomez Pearlberg, many poems are by turns obvious, self-important, tedious, and indulgent--just like Open Mic Night down at the local tavern.-Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, NYCopyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.