The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry

Rating:
Summary: Walls to break, realities to shake...
Review: A good friend of mine gave me this book as a gift a few years ago. I have heard of many of the poets included and discovered a few that I now consider my favorites. One of these poets is David Lerner. Every poem of his that was included in this volume are perfect works of art. It is a shame that his books are out of print and hard to find. Mike Topp's poems broke new ground to me. Through his work, I discovered poetry in things that I have never noticed before. I highly recommend this collection to those looking for non-traditional approaches to poetry.

Rating:
Summary: Excellence in poetry
Review: Alan Kaufman and S.A.Griffin should be commended for putting together this poetry book. These are poets that know how to tell it like it is and not fairy tale poetry. A must read for connoisseurs of true American poetry.

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Summary: English student and fellow poet
Review: As a student I have found it to be a difficult task to find an anthology that encompasses the postmodern period. The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry has far exceeded any expectations I have had. I've found myself measuring other books by its contemporary content and its creative presentation. Lacking the dry quality of other anthologies, my eyes never tire of thumbing through and "discovering" a poem I hadn't seen on previous ventures. This anthology alivens the senses and wakens the imagination, allowing the reader to taste the lives of the poets. The taste, a quenching rush of inspiration testing the depths of the human experience.

Rating:
Summary: A fantastic book!
Review: Fortunately, the editors of this book decided not to exclude anyone merely because he or she obtained some degree of fame or wealth, although such is frowned upon by certain unsuccessful elements in the literary community. By taking from the broad context of available poetry in the last half of this century, they have produced a lasting masterpiece.

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Summary: Bourgeois Poets Need not Apply
Review: Here are found the poems of God's people--the outcasts, the dark skinned, the wanderers & the revolutionaries. Not the complacent, famous, academically lauded bourgeois wordsmiths, whose finely tuned logos tickles the ears of the privileged; but the harsh, dissonant, intrusive thoughts from the Shadow of society.

There is no poetry in privilege, not really, just resonant words with matching rhythms to lull the bourgeois into a sense of having actually experienced something. That excrement will not be found in these pages. Here are the words of queers & niggers, the molested and the addicted, revolutionary martyrs and forgotten prisoners. Guaranteed to disturb you. They violate taboos and afflict the comfortable.

Some is political posturing. As much as I like Tuli Kupfberg's "Paint it Black," it's nothing more than Anarchist filk. Doesn't make it good poetry--even though I appreciate Anarchism.

Luis J. Rodriguez's "To the police officer who refused to sit in the same rom as my son because he's a 'gang banger'," however prosaic it may be, has a rhythm all its own, its words elicit dark emotions, hard to finish reading without smoldering tears of unfaired against rage--no matter how white the reader.

Rudolfo Anaya's pocho poem, "Walt Whitman Strides the Llano of New Mexico," opens a window into the experience of the disenculturated, of the moment of discovering a sense of value & personhood.

Poem after poem demand to be read outloud, in a crowded mall or an elevator in a skyscraper. Each one will disrupt your day. Each one is powerful medicine, like Grandfather Peyote, causing a purge before enlightenment.

Rating:
Summary: stunning
Review: I don't even think words can describe the eclectic nature of this book and it's content. I reccoment it to anyone who enjoys poetry tho! :)

Rating:
Summary: stunning
Review: I don't even think words can describe the eclectic nature of this book and it's content. I reccoment it to anyone who enjoys poetry tho! :)

Rating:
Summary: I think you forgot something...
Review: I found this book on accident and couldn't put it down for days. Anyone w/ an open mind and a love for poetry must read this book. Kaufman not only included some of the best radical poetry in america, but also goes through great pains to make sure the reader is educated on the authors and the poems back grounds.

Rating:
Summary: Who Gives a *beep* what the price is buy this book
Review: I found this book on accident and couldn't put it down for days. Anyone w/ an open mind and a love for poetry must read this book. Kaufman not only included some of the best radical poetry in america, but also goes through great pains to make sure the reader is educated on the authors and the poems back grounds.

Rating:
Summary: A Mixed Bag
Review: I have mixed feelings about this collection of "outlaw" poets, because I live outside the U.S. and have lived in countryside China where the government really doesn't care if you live or die or spew green foam from both ends--meaning what? No safety nets like clinics with clean needles and not even a job at Macdonald's, or a flop in a salvation army cot but begging and starving to death and people stepping over your body as it blackens in the street. That's why so much of what these new outlaws say in their street poetry rings slightly hollow to me. (that's not to say that America doesn't mangle and murder its children, but there are--admittedly--a few more ledges to land on in the U.S. before one dives into societal hell.) And of course, among these outlaws is at least one college professor who is as much of an outlaw as my aunt is, and yet another who has a pretty good middle class house and a pension and a wife who indulges his writing the spare, misogynistic exercises he calls poems, and then there are the entertainers and recording artists like Bob Dylan who was never an outlaw to begin with and has made the fortune of record producers and record companies, not to mention his own. So who's kidding whom with this title? Granted, the book is seeded with fine--even great poems like Michael Lally's "My Life"--and legendary names like Bob Kaufman, Jack Hirschman and Woody Guthrie, but for every one of those poems and every one of those names there are a dozen from the posers and the wannabes--and yes, the cry-babies who want to point the finger at everyone but themselves and say a dirty word or two in the bargain to be "shocking" in a world that is now way past shock. That's why a great part of this book is a cookie-cutter yawn, not even as interesting as a midnight Veg-O-Matic commercial. In fact if many of these folks were given a spot on your television you'd probably turn them off--not from shock, not from the gut-wrenching pain they want to share with you, or from the intensity of their vision of the Truth that they've gathered from their lives with their torn and bleeding fingers, but out of sheer boredom. These are the middle-class kids who grew up reading City Lights Pocket Poets and Beat Hagiographies and wanted to find their mugs in the "Left to Right" shots in the middle of those books. This is P.C. territory we're treading in too, so we have to make sure we "respect" (meaning accept uncritically--(and please remember to clap)) everyone and everything here and leave our common sense hanging on the hat rack, thank you.

Even some of the fine poets like Joy Harjo and Simon Ortiz who are represented here contributed not so great poems, and lent their names rather than their talents to this phone-book sized effort. So what? Maybe a book of half the number of pages would have been better. Maybe a more representative selection from the best poets? Who knows?