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    Book of Blues

    Part of Penguin Poets

    Author Jack Kerouac
    Introduction by Robert Creeley
    Ebook
    Penguin Adult HC/TR | Penguin Books
    On sale Sep 01, 1995 | 288 Pages | 9781101548806
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    Eight extended poems from the acclaimed author of On the Road and Big Sur—featuring an introduction by Robert Creeley
     
    Best known for his “Legend of Duluoz” novels, Jack Kerouac is also an important poet. In the eight poems collected in Book of Blues, Kerouac writes from the heart of experience in the music of language, employing the same instrumental blues form that he used to fullest effect in Mexico City Blues, his largely unheralded classic of postmodern literature.
     
    “In my system, the form of blues choruses is limited by the small page of the breastpocket notebook in which they are written, like the form of a set number of bars in a jazz blues chorus, and so sometimes the word-meaning can carry from one chorus into another, or not, just like the phrase-meaning can carry harmonically from one chorus to another, or not, in jazz, so that, in these blues as in jazz, the form is determined by time, and by the musician’s spontaneous phrasing & harmonizing with the beat of time as if waves & waves on by in measured choruses.”—Jack Kerouac
     
    These poems include:
     
    • San Francisco Blues
    • Richmond Hill Blues
    • Bowery Blues
    • MacDougal Street Blues
    • Desolation Blues
    • Orizaba 210 Blues
    • Orlanda Blues
    • Cerrada Medellin Blues

    Edited by Kerouac himself, Book of Blues is an exuberant foray into language and consciousness, rich with imagery, propelled by rhythm, and based in a reverent attentiveness to the moment.
    Book Of BluesIntroduction by Robert Creeley

    San Franciso Blues
    Richmond Hill Blues
    Bowery Blues
    MacDougal Street Blues
    Desolation Blues
    Orizaba 210 Blues
    Orlanda Blues
    Cerrada Medellin Blues

    Notes on Dates and Sources

    "Jack Would Speak Through the Imperfect Medium of Alice," by Alice Notley

    Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922, the youngest of three children in a Franco-American family. He attended local Catholic and public schools and won a scholarship to Columbia University in New York City, where he first met Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. His first novel, The Town and the City, appeared in 1950, but it was On the Road, published in 1957 and memorializing his adventures with Neal Cassady, that epitomized to the world what became known as the “Beat generation” and made Kerouac one of the most best-known writers of his time. Publication of many other books followed, among them The Dharma Bums, The Subterraneans, and Big Sur. Kerouac considered all of his autobiographical fiction to be part of “one vast book,” The Duluoz Legend. He died in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1969, at the age of forty-seven. View titles by Jack Kerouac

    About

    Eight extended poems from the acclaimed author of On the Road and Big Sur—featuring an introduction by Robert Creeley
     
    Best known for his “Legend of Duluoz” novels, Jack Kerouac is also an important poet. In the eight poems collected in Book of Blues, Kerouac writes from the heart of experience in the music of language, employing the same instrumental blues form that he used to fullest effect in Mexico City Blues, his largely unheralded classic of postmodern literature.
     
    “In my system, the form of blues choruses is limited by the small page of the breastpocket notebook in which they are written, like the form of a set number of bars in a jazz blues chorus, and so sometimes the word-meaning can carry from one chorus into another, or not, just like the phrase-meaning can carry harmonically from one chorus to another, or not, in jazz, so that, in these blues as in jazz, the form is determined by time, and by the musician’s spontaneous phrasing & harmonizing with the beat of time as if waves & waves on by in measured choruses.”—Jack Kerouac
     
    These poems include:
     
    • San Francisco Blues
    • Richmond Hill Blues
    • Bowery Blues
    • MacDougal Street Blues
    • Desolation Blues
    • Orizaba 210 Blues
    • Orlanda Blues
    • Cerrada Medellin Blues

    Edited by Kerouac himself, Book of Blues is an exuberant foray into language and consciousness, rich with imagery, propelled by rhythm, and based in a reverent attentiveness to the moment.

    Table of Contents

    Book Of BluesIntroduction by Robert Creeley

    San Franciso Blues
    Richmond Hill Blues
    Bowery Blues
    MacDougal Street Blues
    Desolation Blues
    Orizaba 210 Blues
    Orlanda Blues
    Cerrada Medellin Blues

    Notes on Dates and Sources

    "Jack Would Speak Through the Imperfect Medium of Alice," by Alice Notley

    Author

    Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922, the youngest of three children in a Franco-American family. He attended local Catholic and public schools and won a scholarship to Columbia University in New York City, where he first met Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. His first novel, The Town and the City, appeared in 1950, but it was On the Road, published in 1957 and memorializing his adventures with Neal Cassady, that epitomized to the world what became known as the “Beat generation” and made Kerouac one of the most best-known writers of his time. Publication of many other books followed, among them The Dharma Bums, The Subterraneans, and Big Sur. Kerouac considered all of his autobiographical fiction to be part of “one vast book,” The Duluoz Legend. He died in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1969, at the age of forty-seven. View titles by Jack Kerouac

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