Book of Blues

About Book of Blues

Eight extended poems from the acclaimed author of On the Road and Big Sur—featuring an introduction by Robert Creeley
 
Best known for his “Legend of Duluoz” novels, Jack Kerouac is also an important poet. In the eight poems collected in Book of Blues, Kerouac writes from the heart of experience in the music of language, employing the same instrumental blues form that he used to fullest effect in Mexico City Blues, his largely unheralded classic of postmodern literature.
 
“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
 
These poems include:
 
• San Francisco Blues
• Richmond Hill Blues
• Bowery Blues
• MacDougal Street Blues
• Desolation Blues
• Orizaba 210 Blues
• Orlanda Blues
• Cerrada Medellin Blues

Edited by Kerouac himself, 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.