In this pioneering critical study of Jack Kerouac’s book-length poem, Mexico City Blues—apoetic parallel to the writer’s fictional saga, the Duluoz Legend—James T. Jones uses a rich and flexible neoformalist approach to argue his case for the importance of Kerouac’s rarely studied poem. After a brief summary of Kerouac’s poetic career, Jones embarks on a thorough reading of Mexico City Blues from several different perspectives: he first focuses on Kerouac’s use of autobiography in the poem and then discusses how Kerouac’s various trips to Mexico, his conversion to Buddhism, his theory of spontaneous poetics, and his attraction to blues and jazz influenced the theme, structure, and sound of Mexico City Blues. Jones’s multidimensional explication suggests the formal and thematic complexity of Kerouac’s long poem and demonstrates the major contribution Mexico City Blues makes to post–World War II American poetry and poetics.

In this pioneering critical study of Jack Kerouac’s book-length poem, Mexico City Blues—apoetic parallel to the writer’s fictional saga, the Duluoz Legend—James T. Jones uses a rich and flexible neoformalist approach to argue his case for the importance of Kerouac’s rarely studied poem. After a brief summary of Kerouac’s poetic career, Jones embarks on a thorough reading of Mexico City Blues from several different perspectives: he first focuses on Kerouac’s use of autobiography in the poem and then discusses how Kerouac’s various trips to Mexico, his conversion to Buddhism, his theory of spontaneous poetics, and his attraction to blues and jazz influenced the theme, structure, and sound of Mexico City Blues. Jones’s multidimensional explication suggests the formal and thematic complexity of Kerouac’s long poem and demonstrates the major contribution Mexico City Blues makes to post–World War II American poetry and poetics.

In the first comprehensive history of the postwar avant-garde, "Belgrad contributes valuable insight and original scholarship to the study of 'projective' and 'spontaneous' aesthetics among cutting edge art movements of the American midcentury" (Tom Clark, author of "Jack Kerouac: A Biography"). 8 color plates. 28 halftones. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Noting that even casual readers recognize family relationships as the basis for Kerouac's autobiographical prose, Jones discusses these relationships in terms of Freud's notion of the Oedipus complex."--BOOK JACKET.

The first book-length study of why the Beats were so fascinated by Mexico and how they represented its landscape, history, and mystical practices in their work, this volume examines such canonical figures as Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Lamantia, McClure, and Ferlinghetti, as well as lesser-known female Beat writers like Margaret Randall, Bonnie Bremser, and Joanne Kyger.

Albert Gelpi's American Poetry after Modernism is a study of sixteen major American poets of the postwar period, from Robert Lowell to Adrienne Rich. Gelpi argues that a distinctly American poetic tradition was solidified in the later half of the twentieth century, thus severing it from British conventions. In Gelpi's view, what distinguishes the American poetic tradition from the British is that at the heart of the American endeavor is a primary questioning of function and medium. The chief paradox in American poetry is the lack of a tradition that requires answering and redefining - redefining what it means to be a poet and, likewise, how the words of a poem create meaning, offer insight into reality, and answer the ultimate questions of living. Through chapters devoted to specific poets, Gelpi explores this paradox by providing an original and insightful reading of late-twentieth-century American poetry.

Discusses the literary works and great authors of the Beat Generation.