Title: Beat Poets
Author: Carmila Ciuraru
Type: Poetry
Page Count/Review Word Count: 258
Rating: 4/5
This little collection is a fun pocket-sized collection of different beat poetry, encompassing everyone from Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac to Lawrence Ferlenghetti. If anything, my only real criticism for it would be the fact that I’d already read a few of the poems elsewhere and so I skipped them to whizz through it a little quicker. I don’t need to re-read Allen Ginsberg’s America, for example, because I know the whole thing off by heart.
If you’re new to the work of the beat poets then this is a pretty good place to start. There’s a lot of good stuff in here, but the problem for me was that I’d already read a bunch of it. It was like putting an album on and hoping for some new music, only to discover that it’s just a greatest hits compilation. That doesn’t make it a bad thing, but it could be better.
Still, I think as an introduction to the world of beat poetry, which is arguably my favourite kind of poetry, this is a pretty good place to start. It’s also a nice little edition and so it’s one of those rare finds where the content and the presentation of it are both pretty good. You know what you’re getting going into it and while it might not quite blow your mind or exceed your expectations, it’ll certainly meet them. What else could you ask for?
