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Book of Blues
- Author
- Jack Kerouac
- Narrator
- Andrew Eiden
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Publish Date
- 15 November 2025
- Run Time
- 2 hours 55 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
From the acclaimed Beat Generation author of On the Road and The Dharma Bums come eight extended poems in which he reflects on the urban settings he finds himself in.
Best known for his novels, Jack Kerouac is also an important poet. In these poems, Kerouac writes from the heart of experience in the music of language, employing the same instrumental blues and jazz forms that he used in another book of poems, Mexico City Blues.
The poems included here, written between 1954 and 1961, are: - “San Francisco Blues”- “Richmond Hill Blues”- “Bowery Blues”- “MacDougal Street Blues”- “Desolation Blues”- “Orizaba 210 Blues”- “Orlanda Blues”- “Cerrada Medellin Blues”The author explains his musical influences and the self-imposed length of the poems: “In my system, the form of blues choruses is limited by the small page of the breastpocket notebook in which they are written, like the form of a set number of bars in a jazz blues chorus, and so sometimes the word-meaning can carry from one chorus into another, or not, just like the phrase-meaning can carry harmonically from one chorus to another, or not, in jazz, so that, in these blues as in jazz, the form is determined by time, and by the musician’s spontaneous phrasing & harmonizing with the beat of time as if waves & waves on by in measured choruses.”—Jack Kerouac
Book of Blues is an exuberant foray into language and consciousness, rich with imagery, propelled by rhythm, and based in a reverent attentiveness to the moment.
Critics Review
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“They are strongly tied to place and are, as the allusion to music implies, boldly improvisational…as he riffs and indulges in easy wordplay…These scintillating poems will strike a chord with fans of performance poetry or even rap, as well as with Kerouac enthusiasts.”
Booklist
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“Sequences of song-poems rooted in urban locales that range from San Francisco to Mexico City…In each sequence, a thread is carried over from one poem to the next, like song verses or diary entries interrupted by drink or sleep…These previously unpublished poems annoy and amuse and occasionally relax into beauty.”
Library Journal
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“Girls, nonsense, and the craft of writing are topics that figure prominently. Like all of Kerouac’s work, these choruses live or die with the poet’s enthusiasm, sometimes sunk in navel-gazing, sometimes stunning in their inspired leaps between images or thoughts. They beg to be read aloud and, like the jazz they are meant to reflect, some sections really swing while others are just keeping time.”
Publishers Weekly
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“Provides an intensely vivid witness of both writer and time.”
Robert Creeley, American poet and former New York State Poet Laureate
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Jack Kerouac
- Narrator
- Andrew Eiden
- Duration
- 2 hours 55 minutes
- Release Date
- 15 November 2025
- ISBN
- 9798212234375
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Genre
- Poetry, Poetry
Synopsis
From the acclaimed Beat Generation author of On the Road and The Dharma Bums come eight extended poems in which he reflects on the urban settings he finds himself in.Best known for his novels, Jack Kerouac is also an important poet. In these poems, Kerouac writes from the heart of experience in the music of language, employing the same instrumental blues and jazz forms that he used in another book of poems, Mexico City Blues.The poems included here, written between 1954 and 1961, are: - “San Francisco Blues”- “Richmond Hill Blues”- “Bowery Blues”- “MacDougal Street Blues”- “Desolation Blues”- “Orizaba 210 Blues”- “Orlanda Blues”- “Cerrada Medellin Blues”The author explains his musical influences and the self-imposed length of the poems: “In my system, the form of blues choruses is limited by the small page of the breastpocket notebook in which they are written, like the form of a set number of bars in a jazz blues chorus, and so sometimes the word-meaning can carry from one chorus into another, or not, just like the phrase-meaning can carry harmonically from one chorus to another, or not, in jazz, so that, in these blues as in jazz, the form is determined by time, and by the musician’s spontaneous phrasing & harmonizing with the beat of time as if waves & waves on by in measured choruses.”—Jack KerouacBook of Blues is an exuberant foray into language and consciousness, rich with imagery, propelled by rhythm, and based in a reverent attentiveness to the moment.
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