Jack Kerouac is truly an American icon. His writing has become legendary- and I think for good reason. His style of writing brought about a revolution in the way to construct a novel and his unique insight into his characters gave us, the reader, a new way of understanding both them, and ourselves. However, as far as a Haiku poet, his greatest gift was one of exploration. This book is less a book of great Haiku, and more of an experiment in Haiku. Most of his poems fall dreadfully short of what a real Haiku poem can do. I highly recommend "Take a Deep Breath: The Haiku Way to Inner Peace" by Sylvia Forges-Ryan to those who are really interested in understanding the deep and fragile art of Haiku. The poetry of Sylvia Forges-Ryan rings true both to the traditions of the form and often, to the depths of our souls.

I'm giving this book three stars, though Kerouac rightly deserves 5, and Regina Weinreich just as many for her wonderful introduction and efforts to gather nearly all of JK's known Haiku-based poems. My low rating is for the book's design, presentation, and production--not insignificant matters for our eventual interest and overall impression of a work of writing. Design is not separate from our enjoyment of the work, and here we see how design can sabotage the wonderful and various occasions condensed into Kerouac's "short and sweet sudden jump[s] of thought." As a reader I am shocked when I turn from a beautiful grouping of words like "Blowing in an afternoon wind, /on a white fence,/ A cobweb," close the book in order to look out the window at the world just described, and then look down to see: A Clown, a scrawled caricature of a man, and one dashed off in all haste and without any insight into the character of the writer; the funny little beatnik letters, and disgustingly wallpaperish patterns on the back cover. Everything about the book cover screams for me to run away. Not to mention that every copy in the bookstore was manufactured badly--so that the printing on every page slants, as if falling into the binding. The cover portrait is a terrible way of pandering to image recognition rather than the quiet lyric intensity of the poems. Penguin's design office should be ashamed for reintroducing stereotypes which distance us from this generation of great artists and writers, writers who helped to wake up America from its general somnolence. Kerouac's memory, and American Poetry deserve a better face than this.

i was shocked to see this book with a three star rating, and more shocked that this was the rusult of one reader's dissatisfaction with the cover. i like the cover, but i love the book. just read it, and let the important pictures be the ones it conjures in your mind. i wish i could seven stars to this book - so that the average would equal the 5 it justifies.

Neal Cassady is a man both revered and despised. This book, which anyone interested in the given time period should read, gives an unbiased look at Neal (the Holy Goof and fastestmanalive) and the people who surrounded him: his family, lovers, and friends (Jack Keruoac, Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, etc). It neither praises nor degrades him, presenting him merely as a remarkable man and letting you decide for yourself.

Neal Cassady was a very interesting and multi-faceted muse of the Beat writers and Kesey's Merry Pranksters, certainly an integral part of both generations. Anyone with an interest in these writers must familiarize themselves with Cassady. In this respect Plummer does an adequate job of presenting both Cassady's life and providing some background into the lives of those literary geniuses who immortalized him in their writing.
In all biographies one finds bias, it is an integral and valid part of the art. However, Plummer's bias is almost overwhelming. Constantly comparing Cassady to Chirst, lauding his virtues and beauty, Plummer creates a Cassady that becomes unbelieveable to the reader. Instead of getting to know an amazing man, one finds oneself reading a hero story, the immaculate life of Plummer's Cassady. Even Kerouac, in his works, presents a more balanced view of Neal, whom he loved as his best friend for years.
It is well written and is a decent read but if you are familiar with Cassady's life, you find your self reading a book about Willam Plummer, if you are unfamiliar you find your self reading a story about a man as realistic as Captian America.
There is so much more written on the man, and most is far superior. Read it if you must but you could do better. If adoration of Cassady is what you're looking for, read "Howl" or "On The Road" or "Visions of Cody" or even Cassady's own post-humously published autobiography "The First Third" (especially his letters) and get some great literature under your belt at the same time.

The absolute finest of all the Neal biographies....you gain a true appreciation of what it was like to know--to experience-- this crazed, "fastestmanalive" from the people who lived in that special time. Read "On The Bus" by Keasy, and Neal's "First Third"....and THEN read Plummers bio.

Lew Welch and Jack Kerouac...two of my favorite writers on the road with Albert Saijo (who turns out to be a fine memoirist) right after Kerouac's roaring success with On The Road. There they are madly yapping away in front seat and back of Lew's jeepster Willy, rushing through the nights and days of innocent (well, really not so) America, and stopping once in a while to record it all in haiku. It's got to be a classic, right? Think again. Sure there are one or two good haiku to be found in the collection, and Grey Wolf Press includes enough supporting material to add context and some pith to the purchase, but this book is really for the die-hard Gotta-Have-It-All-Right-Down-To-The-Laundry-Lists-fans of beatdom. Ring of Bone, On The Road, and just about every other book written by these greats will give you more for your money.

Such "haiku" - "They make good coffee / in Oklahoma" - not particularly haiku, not particularly interesting ... if I wrote the lines, they certainly wouldn't be published ... there are other similarly brilliant entries: "There's Mister I-Cower- / under-My Car" or brilliant stand-alone lines "Whore candy". Trip Trap leaves me unimpressed.

However, the book contains a recollection of the trip by Albert Saijo, the trip as described in an unfinished work of Lew Welch, Trip Trap itself which is a collaborative effort between those two and Jack Kerouac, and finally some letters of Lew Welch to Jack Kerouac. The net result is a book that gives insight into the beat movement and into the minds of Kerouac and Welch. For those with even a slight interest in either topic, this is an interesting and informative book.

"Trip Trap: Haiku on the Road" represents a collaborative effort by Jack Kerouac, Albert Saijo, and Lew Welch. There is also an editor's note by Donald Allen. The book is divided into 4 main sections. "A Recollection," by Saijo, is an 11 page memoir of the road trip during which the poems in the book were written. "We Started for New York," also about the trip, is the opening of an unfinished novel by Welch. The main text, "Trip Trap," is a body of poetry attributed to all three as a collaborative effort. And finally, "Dear Jack" is a collection of letters (dated 1959-60) from Welch to Kerouac.

"Trip Trap" is thus, despite its short length (69 + vii pages), a diverse text with a fascinating history behind it. The poems are not haiku in the strictest sense; I would call them "haiku-like." The poems offer some interesting imagery and reflections on the American landscape, as well as a number of literary references. We get many glimpses from the men's journey--radio antennas in Texas, cows in Nebraska, a cross on an Arizona highway, etc. A particularly interesting section involves a Saijo haiku with alternate versions by Welch and Kerouac.

The book overall is infused with the sense of discovery one gets in traveling across the USA. Saijo notes that the poetry in the book "has the fathomless art of random speech overheard through the course of a day." I really enjoyed "Trip Trap."

Gifford and Lee, seemingly well read about the Beats and Keoruac, are second only to Ann Charter's biographical work on Kerouac. The real sense of the'50's, the mentality, the hazards, and the activities of Burrows, Ginsberg,Jack and the boys are given a very thorough and entertaining once over. The scholarly merit isn't here, but the titilation and interesting skinny is.

Chock to bursting with recollections from Kerouac's intimates, this page-turner will be read in two or three sittings. These recollections are interspersed among the authors' own discoveries and conclusions. Not as exhaustive as "Memory Babe," this book is more for the person just getting into Kerouac's work and life. In the back of this book are lists of what has become of these acquaintances of Kerouac's and what their aliases were in his books, information which will become dearer to you as you delve deeper into Jack's Duluoz Legend. All in all, one terrific book worth anyone's time and money.

The only good writing in this book is Carolyn Cassady's introduction. Most of these photos have appeared before. The editing is odd in that there are dozens of good photos of Kerouac that are only 1x1" and several full page photos of city scenes with no Kerouac content whatsovever. The text is lame. For those who want to complete their Kerouac reference librarys no matter the quality of the product.

This book features a great collection of photographs
documenting Kerouac and his circle of acquitances
spanning an impressive length of time. I would have liked
the author to have spent a little bit more time
exploring Kerouac's spiritual side, as oppossed to the media
orientated recitation of random incidents, but I
understand for it is the latter which pushes book exposure
and sales. Still, it was a book which I would encourage
others to read.

This book offers more unique photos of Kerouac and associates than any other Kerouac book, including "Angel-Headed Hipster." But the same problems with most Kerouac biographies are present in this one as well. The biographer, David Sandison, seems more intrigued by Kerouac's image rather than his substance. Of course, this is why he painstakingly gathered the photos and presented them here. As usual, Kerouac's true motivations and inner demons are given only passing references, in favor of the more cinematic qualities of his life, eg. the women, the booze, and the fast cars. This book is not for the critical Kerouac reader seeking literary insight. It is, instead, for those enamored with the Kerouac Legend.

If you truly want to get personal with Kerouac, pick up anything with Ann Charters' name on it. She has proven, by far, to be the world's most authoritative and compelling Kerouac scholar.

The book dives into the similarities between the main character, McCracken and the legendary Jack Kerouac. From different aspects of the author's life do we see the independence and sensitivity that were such a major part of not only Kerouac but the author as well. Two of the underlying themes within the book deal with each of their conflicts with alcoholism, spirituality and their French-Canadian roots (The author does a good job of bringing up the conflict over just how much of importance Kerouac had placed on his Canadian ancestry). All in all, while the time sequences were a bit sparatic and therefore hard to follow, the basic themes were always prevelant without being overbearing. McGoogan does a good job of giving a subjective view of Kerouac within this fictional form. I would reccomend the book moreso for readers interested in the complexities of Kerouac than for the average reader. (But that could be because of the interest that I myself carry within the subject).

Je l'ai trouve si interessant. Kerouac parle de ses voyages atour les E.U. par une voiture ancienne. De temps en temps, il m'ennuie. On voit clairement le culture des "Beatnicks."

Ah for the days of a linear plot and a novel that is not so self indulgent it blurs the line between fiction and non-fiction by being neither. Such is Jack Kerouac Is Pregnant, an amateur outing that rides soley on its clever title.

I applaude Jack Kerouac is Pregnant for a variety of reasons. The sarcastic, wry wit that gleams through the pages is evident after obvious examination. And the incredible, massive madness that seeps through the corners of the deliriously delightful assortment of plays. Carry on, Aurelie Sheehan. Be great.

"It takes a long time to see you are a slave," muses one character in Aurelie Sheehan's debut collection, a line that succinctly captures the cumulative effect of her stories. These lyrical, sometimes bitingly funny chronicles of women breaking out of imposed roles feature misplaced waitresses, secretaries, prostitutes, and other working girls. In the title story, a woman yearns to be like Jack Kerouac, but is held back by a litany of rules teaching her to be a submissive girl, a "pansy." The main character in "Look at the Moon" is bored to distraction by her receptionist job but is still half under the influence of a Catholic upbringing when she hooks up with a flamboyant stranger and goes on a life-altering road trip with her. In "The Dove," a wealthy widow who was pressured by her family to marry a rich man spends her life fixated on an affair she had a week before her wedding. Women young and old, rich and poor, make soul-threatening sacrifices to adhere to societal or familial strictures. Love is passionately evoked here, as are the myths and illusions that sustain it. Non-linear, poetic, and arresting, Sheehan's storytelling skills ring with the authority of honesty, compassion, and experience.

A disappointing collection, probably put together to capitalize on the author's name.

Jack Kerouac, Scattered Poems (City Lights, 1971)

Over the few years Kerouac wrote, he dashed off a number of poems that managed never to get collected, many of them in letters to Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady. City Lights, with help from Ginsberg, compiled a small volume of these poems and released them some thirty years ago.

While a few of the works here (and, in some cases, a line or two within one of the works) shows the power and natural affinity for language that makes Kerouac one of the enduring figures of American literature, Most of what's here is solid evidence that, where uncollected poems are concerned, there's usually a reason why they weren't published in the first place. Perhaps it is the prominence of the author in question, but while reading most of this work, I got a sense of hopelessness, a pathetic (in the classic definition of the term) feeling of emptiness. Unlike both the surrealism and the jazz from which Kerouac and his fellow Beats drew their inspiration, and also unlike the authors
from that time who have been incorrectly labelled as Beats (Bukowski, Alfred Chester, to an extent Paul Bowles, etc.), Kerouac's material seems to lack either the underlying meaning or the sense of immediate purpose that separates the best of the aforementioned authors from their scads of less talented imitators.

One place in which Kerouac does shine here, though, is in a small selection of haiku at the end of the book. Kerouac was one of the first American authors to really grasp the spirit of English-language haiku, as mentioned in a brief intro to the book's last section. Kerouac quotes a few Basho haiku and bemoans the inability of English to imitate the free-flowing Japanese language, coming to the conclusion that the "seventeen syllable" rule should be dropped for American haiku (as most serious haiku writers and scholars in English have also done in the forty or so years since Kerouac originally composed the works here). In the haiku, where Kerouac is forced to work with tight lines and spare images, his gift comes through. Unfortunately, it does so in far too few other pieces in this book. **

There are few times in the history of mankind that we can sit back and allow ourselves to be manipulated by a pure mad man (brilliant writer). Kerouac's poems allow the mind to travel to the brink of truth and reality and come back unharmed and ... enlightened ... Thank God for kerouac ... he makes the world a better place and his poems are subconcious unfiltered visions of real life. "Pull My Daisy" with Ginsberg is a masterpiece as is "Old Angel Midnight". here is one poem : TO EDWARD DAHLBERG

Don't use the telephone. People are never ready to answer it. Use Poetry.

And Jack Kerouac does use poetry ... he uses it to give insight into a world he knew so well.

This work is simply awful. I am a literary scholar who has written a great deal about Kerouac, and I enjoy most of his work. I picked up On the Road as a high school student and have always felt a kinship with Kerouac. However, many of his experiments with "spontaneous bop prosody"--frantic, rushed, "automatic" writing--are failures. Pic is one such failure. Kerouac's narrative technique could sometimes lead to wonderful results, as with the Subterraneans. With Pic, the results are horrendous. Written in Carolina dialect, the novella tells the story of a young black boy. Kerouac wants to experiment with plot, point-of-view, structure and composition. This is noble, but unfortunately the product suffers in this case.