Overview

From the renowned Beat writer Jack Kerouac comes this important work of lyric verse, one of his most formally inventive books. A long poem in Kerouac's freewheeling and spontaneous improvisational style, Mexico City Blues is a unique epic of sound, rhythm, and religion. Called superb sensory meditations, the poetry takes in life, death, and spirituality but roams widely across continents and cultures. Memories, fantasies, dreams, and surrealistic free association are all lyrically combined in the loose format inspired by jazz and the blues. Considered a major contribution to post-World War II American poetics, it opened up a new way of writing that had a major influence on others, including Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley, Michael McClure, and Bob Dylan. Kerouac began writing the 242 stanzas, or ""choruses,"" that became Mexico City Blues while living in Mexico City, with the stanzas defined only by the size of Kerouac's notebook page. Written between 1954 and 1957 and first published in 1959, it is Kerouac's most important verse work. This poetry--wild, joyful, sad, and magnificent--is a surreal and all-encompassing experience and reveals the portrait of a complex man endowed with deep sensitivity.

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Reviews

"""A series of improvisations, notes, a shorthand of perceptions and memories, having in large part the same kind of word-play and rhythmic invention to be found in his prose."" -- ""Poetry magazine"" ""A spontaneous bop prosody and original classic literature."" -- ""Allen Ginsberg, American poet, writer, and Beat Generation pioneer"" ""It blew my mind. It was the first poetry that spoke to me in my own language."" -- ""Bob Dylan, American singer-songwriter"" ""What seems to me to emerge at the end is a voice of remarkable kindness and gentleness, an engaging and modest good humor, and a quite genuine spiritual simplicity."" -- ""Hudson Review"""

Author Information

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) was an American novelist and poet who influenced generations of writers. He is recognized for his spontaneous prose style and for being a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Andrew Eiden is an audiobook narrator who came from a long line of theater folk and has been acting since the age of four. He has starred in dozens of commercials as well as multiple television shows. At the age of eleven, he won first place in a local drama festival, which jumpstarted his acting career. He has performed in theaters ranging from the Glendale Center Theater to the Pasadena Playhouse.

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