AUTHOR NARRATION
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Beat PoetsEnglish narration
POEM + WORDPLAY
Beat Poets
THE BOOK BEHIND THE POEM
Beat Poets
The title that set the poem’s chain of meanings in motion belongs to this compact anthology.
EVERYMAN’S LIBRARY POCKET POETS
Beat Poets
This 2002 anthology gathers more than twenty-five writers from the Beat movement, including Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, Diane di Prima, and Denise Levertov. It was a gift from the poet’s father—and its wonderfully unstable title became the starting point for this poem.
View the anthologyAMBIGUITY, ILLUSTRATED
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its title delights with its brimming
ambiguity this gift from my father:
without context conceived first in
a page in the Worn Writers census,
or perhaps as
the collected works of some quite
narrow palates, red root vegetable
fanatics, then in imperative where
“Poets” is either or,i.e.
a vengeful decree against the writing
elite or,in the latter and best case,
the free-flung command
(and to poets of all people):
up, down, around the bush,
a rug or the clock or your mother
at checkers, just BEAT, poet, BEAT!
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