Recently I released an episode of PoemTalk in which Clark Coolidge — who has long advocated that Jack Kerouac be taken seriously as an experimental poet, indeed a sound poet — and others joined me to discuss a few sections of Kerouac’s Old Angel Midnight. I usually try to understand general responses to new PoemTalk episodes. For this one I was especially keen. How is Kerouac viewed withing the poetry community? Doubtfully, I would think. And how would fans of Kerouac’s guys-driving-fast-down-the-American-highway fictions and his quasi-Buddhistic-withdrawal-from-modern-life fictions respond to poets wanting to claim him as really much preferring babble flow and experiments in language-as-perception? Somewhat surprisingly, the response has been positive from the various PoemTalk constituencies, such as they can be discerned.
Quelle: detail of Bob Cobbing’s Midnight Press edition of Kerouac’s ‚Old Angel Midnight‘
