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Beat Poets
Beat Poets
Apr 6, 2026 12:57 AM

Author:Carmela Ciuraru

Beat Poets

This rousing anthology features the work of more than twenty-five writers from the great twentieth-century counter-cultural literary movement. Writing with an audacious swagger and an iconoclastic zeal, and declaiming their verse with dramatic flourish in smoke-filled cafés, the Beats gave birth to a literature of previously unimaginable expressive range. The defining work of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac provides the foundation for this collection, which also features the improvisational verse of such Beat legends as Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder and Michael McClure and the work of such women writers as Diane di Prima and Denise Levertov. LeRoi Jones’s plaintive ‘‘Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note’’ and Bob Kaufman’s stirring ‘‘Abomunist Manifesto’’ appear here alongside statements on poetics and the alternately incendiary and earnest correspondence of Beat Generation writers. Visceral and powerful, infused with an unmediated spiritual and social awareness, this is a rich and varied tribute and, in the populist spirit of the Beats, a vital addition to the libraries of readers everywhere.

Reviews

One cannot read this book without the total absorption that comes from the recognition of the truth

—— Nadine Gordimer , New Republic

As vigorous and as exquisitely written as anything he has produced

—— New York Times Book Review

Vivid and telling... Alan Paton may have come closer to conveying the essence of South African history than anyone else

—— Washington Post Book World

A moving story, told with wit and invention, and the language shimmers in the heat-haze of sadness and loss. A truly original first novel

—— Daily Mail

Kitty Aldridge is a real discovery, a writer of precision, delicacy and wit, and her first novel is a rare delight

—— Salman Rushdie

Farcical in the best sense: Blott on the Landscape is as tense and compelling as any good detective novel

—— The Times

This first novel is undeniably rich: a tale woven around the importance of faith, whether in imaginary friends or undiscovered treasures, and the strength of family

—— The Times

The year's most impressive debut

—— John Carey , Sunday Times

Like Donna Tartt’s "The Secret History" or a good film noir . . . Jane’s low-key narration has just the right tone to keep readers hooked

—— People magazine

The strength of 'The Lake of Dead Languages' is a silken prose that lures the reader into Goodman’s . . . story of murder, suicide . . . revenge, and madness

—— The Washington Post Book World

Part suspense, part coming-of-age, and all-enthralling . . . A book that needs the roar of a fire to ward off its psychic chill

—— The Denver Post
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