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:
“Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“There is all the poetry in the world in a name. It is a poem which the mass of men hear and read. What is poetry in the common sense, but a hearing of such jingling names? I want nothing better than a good word. The name of a thing may easily be more than the thing itself to me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“No good poetry is ever written in a manner twenty years old, for to write in such a manner shows conclusively that the writer thinks from books, convention and cliché, not from real life.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)