Lew Welch's letters to Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Jack Kerouac, and many others make up one of the best written records of the Beat era available. Collected by Welch's friend, editor, and literary executor, Donald Allen, the letters offer a personal and very moving account of Welch's private life, as he struggled to find his place as a poet in the 1950s and 60's. More than any thing I've read in recent years, Welch's collected letters provide a historical overview of not just the poet's life, but the West Coast Beat circle, and the times they lived in.

O'Hara was a brilliant poet who seemingly had nothing to write about. His language is incredibly imaginative, and his productivity was astounding. But in the end the vast majority of his poems were little more than frivolous ditties about his friends and the artsy scene around New York City. It's almost a shame that with his amazing talents O'Hara didn't live in a somewhat more challenging set of circumstances - it would have been interesting to hear what he had to say. But reading his poems is like reading the work of an incredibly gifted, yet ultimately vacuous, artist.

An earlier reviewer describes O'Hara's poetry as shallow and vacuous. Shallow, maybe. But not vacuous. O'Hara's interested in the minutiae of daily life - buying a pack of Gauloises on the way to friends for dinner, seeing a headline about Lana Turner collapsing, the hard hats worn by construction workers. Read one poem and you might come away thinking it's trivial. But his life's work - taken as a whole - is an intelligent, alert, funny and perceptive record of a life lived to the full (I think someone else may have said that before me, somewhere). Thing is, O'Hara's interested in surfaces - things, events, trivia - because they have meaning. So his poetry is shallow in a very real and virtuous sense. He's not trying to make big statements, a la Charles Olson or Robert Lowell. What I find amazing is how moving his poetry can so often be, as in The Day Lady Died. On one reading, it's simply a list of things he does on the way to friends for dinner. But the impact is enormous. The poem gets you right up close to O'Hara as he learns of Billie Holiday's death and remembers hearing her sing. Nothing vacuous about that.

This poet changed my life. This poet had style, made his own breaks (luck), had great friends because he gave a damn about them, and loved art unconditionally in any form but with a special love for the city, for the life and art and noise (music) of the city. This poet wore a tie and jacket and swiveled out the door of the Museum of Modern Art with more hip in his pocket than you, Bro. This poet was gay and and every man considered him their best friend and every woman wanted to sleep with him. This poet grew up near Boston, went to the Navy and Hafvard and spent a year in Ann Arbor but was New York all the way, the very heart and soul of New York and the New York School of poets. This poet extends the line from Keats to Rimbaud into the American future.

Although the name does seem redundant, this book is a great anthology. It has Kerouc and Ginsberg's work when they were younger and not yet famous. They are some of the best poets in the last 50 years now. I recommend this book for a real poetry enthusiast or someone who needs to add to their poetry library, but if you just want a taste of poetry, find something else.

Donald Allen's New American Poetry served its purpose very well as a dignified, major anthology of poets whose reputations were then far from secured. It has two very serious flaws. It vastly under-represents women & poets of color. It also creates arbitrary "schools" of poetry that hardly existed then & exist not at all now. In the year 2000, the purpose of this book is perhaps not so clear. Except for Olson, these are all early poems from young poets, many of whom are quite dead now. This anthology is hardly a fair representation of, or introduction to, their art.

But there are two strengths at work here. The New American Poetry is a marvelous historical document of a particular time, an exciting moment in American literature. Also, there are many poets here who subsequently had wonderful careers without attaining the celebrity of Allen Ginsberg, John Ashbury or Robert Creeley. Some of the finest poets in this book have pitifully few of their own best books in print .. the delights of their smaller collections. So the reader may be encountering Helen Adam, Larry Eigner, Ron Lowensohn, Ray Bremser & Joel Oppenheimer for the first time. Or become reacquainted with Paul Blackburn & Denise Levertov.

Even when you keep in mind that the New American Poetry is neither an infallible literary bible of its time nor a substitute for broader anthologies like The Voice that is Great Within Us, the beautiful music it contains will still pack a wallop to your heart & mind.

Bob Rixon

I find this book a great introduction to this type of poetry. You can find a lot of different authors, topics, type of poetry, and each piece you read has something good. I recommend it to everyone that loves contemporany poetry or wants to start reading some.