Poetry
While he is best known for his novels, Kerouac is also noted for his poetry written during the Beat movement. Kerouac stated that he wanted "to be considered as a jazz poet blowing a long blues in an afternoon jazz session on Sunday.". Many of Kerouac's poems follow the style of his free-flowing, uninhibited prose, also incorporating elements of jazz and Buddhism. "Mexico City Blues" a poem published by Kerouac in 1959 is made up of over 200 choruses following the rhythms of jazz music. In much of his poetry, to achieve a jazz-like rhythm, Kerouac made use of the long dash in place of a period. Several excellent examples of this can be seen throughout "Mexico City Blues":
Everything
Is Ignorant of its own emptiness—
Anger
Doesn't like to be reminded of fits—
Other well-known poems by Kerouac, such as "Bowery Blues" incorporate jazz rhythm with Buddhist themes of Sangsara, the cycle of life and subsequent death, and Samadhi, the concentration of composing the mind. Also, following the jazz/blues tradition Kerouac's poetry features repetition and overall themes of the troubles or sense of loss experienced in life.
The story of man
Makes me sick
Inside, outside,
I don't know why
Something so conditional
And all talk
Should hurt me so.
I am hurt
I am scared
I want to live
I want to die
I don't know
Where to turn
In the Void
And when
To cut
Out
Read more about this topic: Jack Kerouac
Famous quotes containing the word poetry:
“That was a way of putting it not very satisfactory:
A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion,
Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle
With words and meanings. The poetry does not matter”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“For me being a poet is a job rather than an activity. I feel I have a function in society, neither more nor less meaningful than any other simple job. I feel it is part of my work to make poetry more accessible to people who have had their rights withdrawn from them.”
—Jeni Couzyn (b. 1942)
“The man Shelley, in very truth, is not entirely sane, and Shelley’s poetry is not entirely sane either. The Shelley of actual life is a vision of beauty and radiance, indeed, but availing nothing, effecting nothing. And in poetry, no less than in life, he is “a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.””
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)