Paperback 6" x 9" 213pp ISBN 978-1-326-44654-3
published January 2016
This seventh collection of essays and reviews follows on
from the previous six in bringing together what I like to think is largely a
survey of mostly lesser-known writers, poets, artists, musicians, and
related people and their publications. Some names in the list of contents
will be immediately identifiable, but it could be that certain aspects of
their work may not be familiar to most readers. Walt Whitman’s links to a
group of early American bohemians is an example of what I’m suggesting.
As with the previous books, the Beats have a central
role, though I hope I’ve looked at a few lesser-known poets, such as Bob
Kaufman, along with pieces on Kerouac and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. And the
magazines that published them, like Exodus, and Between Worlds,
seem to me worth writing about in order to record their contributions
towards circulating interesting literature. I doubt that little magazines
now have the importance they once had, but prior to the arrival of the
internet they were key methods of communication. They were, also, the organs
of expression for bohemia, and that, too, no longer exists in the way it
once did. I’m perhaps beginning to sound like an old man lamenting the
decline of everything he once loved, and there may be some truth in that. I
do miss the magazines and the bookshops where you could find them.
What is poetry? It is all
sorts of things. "Poetry is language at its most distilled and most
powerful", according to Rita Dove.
"Poetry is an act of peace" - Pablo Neruda. If you want to get really
poetic, try Wallace Stevens: "The poet is the priest
of the invisible".
It is more mundane
things, too. Ask Jim Burns, a genial recorder of the alternative scene on
both sides of the Atlantic
and a veteran of the poetry reading circuit. When he writes, "Most poets
will know about places where the given address
doesn't exist", he isn't trying on his hieratic mysticism: he's talking
about turning up for a gig in a strange town and being
unable to locate the venue. "Or the premises are closed", he goes on, "or
someone says, 'But the reading was last week'."
When Mr Burns recited his verse at a college near Blackpool, everything went
well until after the interval, when no one
returned. "'It's not your fault', the organizer said. 'The Miss World
competition is on TV.'" He has been on the bill when
the poets outnumbered the audience, has read in a pub, when "someone decided
to put a coin in the jukebox", and on
one occasion outdoors in the Lake District, where the wind swept his words
away. "To the audience I was simply
a man opening and closing his mouth."
These recollections are
to be found in Anarchists, Beats and Dadaists, Mr Burns's latest
collection of articles from
Penniless Press. Among its contents, gathered from various little magazines,
are pieces on Woody Guthrie, Alan Ansen,
Tristan Tzara and "British Writers and MI5". Some may have been written
while standing outside a locked hall in the
rain, awaiting the organizer of a reading, or on a station platform. "Once I
was dropped at a railway station to catch
a last train that had stopped running six months before. All in a day's
work."
James Campbell (JC)
Times Literary Supplement January 15th 2016
Comments on previous collections:
“This collection of reviews and essays is an
entertaining homage to bohemia by one of its own. Jim Burns – a veteran
fringe poet recently celebrated in these pages as ‘an offbeat prowler’ –
takes a ‘personal’ look at various post-Second World War writers, artists,
musicians and patrons whose talents and innovations have been obscured by
the glare of their more famous contemporaries.”
Times Literary Supplement
“The vast majority of these essays are as fresh and
original today as they were when first written a few decades ago and many
are a sheer joy to read. Partly this is due to Jim Burns’s encyclopaedic
knowledge, though equally enjoyable is the clear, thoughtful style and
boundless enthusiasm for the subjects he brings to the book.”
Morning Star
“What Jim Burns seems to do very well is dust off the
years from forgotten figures, the neglected, the overlooked, even those who
never truly reached any level of recognition. Burns sees in many of them
qualities that have been missed.”
Beat Scene
“Jim Burns’ fourth collections, Bohemians, Beats and
Blues People, illuminates neglected twentieth century bohemians through
wide-ranging highly informative and entertaining essays.”
Tears
in the Fence
Jim Burns’s earlier collections of essays were
Beats, Bohemians and Intellectuals (Trent Books, 2000); Radicals,
Beats and Beboppers (Penniless Press, 2011); Brits, Beats & Outsiders
(Penniless Press, 2012); Bohemians, Beats and Blues People
(Penniless Press, 2013); Artists, Beats & Cool Cats (Penniless Press,
2014). His poetry collections were Laying Something Down (Shoestring
Press, 2007) and Streetsinger (Shoestring Press, 2010).
CONTENTS
PERSONAL MODERNISMS
ALGER HISS
BLOOD ON STEEL
BRITISH WRITERS AND MI5
WOODY GUTHRIE
EDWARD DORN/AMIRI BARAKA
ALAN ANSEN
LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI
BOB KAUFMAN
KEROUAC AND THE BEATS
CATCHING UP WITH KEROUAC
WRITING BEAT
BRION GYSIN
EXODUS
JANET RICHARDS
DISCOVERY
THE BEAT SCENE
BETWEEN WORLDS
FIELDING DAWSON
DESTRUCTION WAS MY BEATRICE
TRISTAN TZARA
JOAN GILBERT
TWO AMERICAN POETS
EDDIE LINDEN
MALCOLM COWLEY
NEW FICTION, 1972
WALT WHITMAN
THE HOSANNA MAN
THE STREET OF WONDERFUL
POSSIBILITIES
THE TASTE IN MY MIND
AN UNHOLY ROW
TUBBY HAYES
UNDERGROUND LONDON
BOPPER
BORDER TROUBLE
LOVE FROM UNCLES BERT AND
JOE
ARE YOU SURE IT’S TONIGHT?