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Title: Mexico City Blues by Jack Kerouac ISBN: 0-8021-3060-7 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: March, 1990 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.58 (12 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Dropping names in rhythm
Comment: Good men who live have karma of a dove. It is 242 choruses, 242 poems. As is everything written by Kerouac, it is autobiographical. How can Mexico have a positive association in Beat history when William Burroughs killed his wife there in a William Tell experiment? Anything by Kerouac was edited and promoted by Allen Ginsberg and for that reason alone a book of poems with Mexico in the title is of interest.
Thinking of comfortable thoughts is what modern society has branded loafing is a line in one of the poems. Zen provides much of the impetus for the collection of poems. Kerouac's work manages to create an atmosphere of tropical vegetation and light. The work is free-form and jazz-like.
Automatic writing? Well, maybe not automatic writing precisely. Certainly the word-play and the fluidity remind the reader of Gertrude Stein. (Mention Gertrude Stein and here we are at chorus 31.)
I like the prose better, but I like the idea of the book and the arrangement. The Beats stood for blessedness and freedom. MEXICO CITY BLUES is an appropriate manifestation of Beat ideology. Fifty first Chorus says America is a permisible dream, a Whitmanesque expression.
This is a celebration of other people. I count Gregory Corso, William Carlos Williams, Oscar Wilde, Alexander Pope, Benjamin Franklin, William Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, the aforesaid Gertrude Stein, Charley Parker, Nin and Ma, Pa or Leo Alcide Kerouac, brother Gerard, Thurber, Baudelaire, Jolson, Miles, Sarah Vaughn, Chagall, Whitman, Melville, Mark Twain, Einstein, Plato, Moses, Aristotle, Joe Louis, Spinoza, James Huneker, Alfred Knopf, H.L. Mencken, David, Picasso, Jesus, Proust, Freud, Glenn Miller, Allen Ginsberg, St. Francis, Siddhartha, Virgin Mary.
Rating: 5
Summary: Great way to get into Kerouac's poetry
Comment: I have been a Kerouac fan for a long time, but it was a couple of years after reading most his novels that I was able to get into his poetry. "Pomes all sizes", for example, sat unread on my bookshelf for some time. "Mexico City Blues" is what really turned me on to his poetry and made me able to appreciate it. I was able to go back and read his other petry with new eyes. This book is fantastic. Read it out loud to yrself, the man had a natural knack for rhythm. Great book.
Rating: 5
Summary: One long, magnificent, riff of the written word....
Comment: I remember when I first stumbled across this book in the early 90's- it was like Christmas came twice that year. You see, I had thought that I had read absolutely everything published by Kerouac, prose and poem. I didn't know this existed, Wow! It is like one long, magnificent blues or jazz riff of the written word. It is a true blues composition because it has genuine soul. The more I think about it, it just might be the best thing that he ever did.
I know this is going to sound outrageous, but the only comparable book of American poetry I can even think of comparing this to would be Whitman's _Leaves of Grass_. Whitman and Kerouac both sang of the same grass roots, mystical, America. And it's still out there, if you shake your mind free of the preconceptions and the [junk]....
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Title: Tristessa by Jack Kerouac, Aram Saroyan ISBN: 0140168117 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: June, 1992 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac ISBN: 0802131867 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: September, 1989 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Desolation Angels by Jack Kerouac, Joyce Johnson ISBN: 1573225053 Publisher: Riverhead Books Pub. Date: September, 1995 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Lonesome Traveler by Jack Kerouac ISBN: 0802130747 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: September, 1989 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Book of Blues (Penguin Poets) by Jack Kerouac ISBN: 0140587004 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: September, 1995 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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