Book Reviews

A rich and voluminous critical and biographical literature about the group of writers who became known as the "Beat Genration" has been growing steadily since Allen Ginsberg began hawking his and his friends' writings from publisher to publisher more than half a century ago. Many there be who are spellbound by this literature and will devour each new serving as it comes along.

     This latest addition to the genre, these two lyrical little chapbooks by Andy Clausen, are not the least tasty nor the least readable morsels.

     Clausen, a younger disciple of Ginsberg and Corso and others among the original Beats, now survives them, as, in my opinion, the best poet in the tradition of the Beats writing today. His verse is rich, rhythmic, erudite and totally enthralling for the reader or hearer. These prose memoirs of Clausen's may not be as rhythmic and seductive as his verse, but they make up for it in directness, intimacy, and a kind of large human embrace of his subject. And, he knows a good story when he sees one.

     This author accomplishes exactly what he sets out to do. Who could ask for more? And he sets forth what he wants to do in identical paragraphs introducing each chapbook:

This is an excerpt from THE LATTER DAYS OF THE BEAT GENERATION. If anything was fabricated it was unconscious-I am human, all I can do is try to be objective. I consider myself terrific at remembering dialogue. I threw chronology out the window. I wanted it to sound like a buddy riding through Nebraska telling the stories of the Latter Days of the Beats, keeping the driver awake.

You'll want to lengthen out the drive. And note that coming along after Allen & Gregory, Clausen's memories of Bremser, Micheline, Vega, Di Prima, Kaufman, and many others are just waiting their chance at print. <> <>

Eric Greinke

SOMETHING IS BURNING IN BROOKLYN
By Linda Lerner
Iniquity Press/Vendetta Books, POB 54,
Manasquan, NJ 08736, npl.

Linda Lerner is a poet who bravely articulates the emotions of fear and loss on both a personal and universal level. Her latest chapbook continues in the vein of City Woman (2006) and Living in Dangerous Times (2007), making art out of anxiety, ultimately finding redemption within oneself. Lerner is a poet of social protest and existential angst, but ultimately she finds strength to go on in the human capacity for love. This is the ineffable, contrasting the dark and light sides of human nature. The conflict between the alienation of a big anonymous city and the need of the individual for meaningful experience provides the tension in her work This is reinforced by a language that hovers on the edge of articulation, reaching for the right words. In the title poem she gets in the groove:

Her m/o is New York colloquial with a hipster edge. The city images are precise and crisp, reflecting a keen perception. From "Driving America"

two women in jeans, stiletto heels
rings in their noses, lips,
bring the troops home buttons on
jackets point to the car,
"it rocks" one shouts, he looks out,

abruptly rear ended by 2000;
"hey mister," the woman cries,
"if you're going to Williamsburg,
can you give us a lift?"

Lerner's work ranges from gritty to the edge of sentimental, occupying the linguistic borderland between Street and Beat with tough but feminine sensibility. She evokes the struggle of human dignity and determination in the face of a depersonalizing urban environment. Hers is a fire with plenty fuel to burn>

Louis McKee

LOVE IN THE TIME OF ELECTRONS
By Ellaraine Lockie
Pudding House Press, 81 Shadymere Lane,
Columbus, OH 43213, 2009, 28 pp., $10.00.

The internet has opened highways into cyberspace, opportunities for tremendous intellectual and cultural evolution. Out of this notion, Ellaraine Lockie has created a wonderful story, a progress and a romance, as rich with details and emotions as any novel, that follows an innocent encounter via e-mails, through telephone hook-ups, to erotic fantasy (including one instigated by a Harry Potter film) to the inevitable face-to-face encounter, and beyond.

From the letters on the blue screen that one after another form words, to the voice coming through the phone lines and melting into her ears, to the gifts, and getting to hold the things he's held, even worn; the courtship of this modern time is as starry and romantic as any could want. But beyond the dream is a new reality:

What is amazing is how so riveting and complete a story can be told in eighteen poems, a dozen and a half glimpses into a raging hot passion. In "Ann Landers on Love":

Lockie is a fine poet who can charm the lyric beauty from a compelling narrative, no easy task. She has a command of language that is a pleasure, and a genuine feel for the music of the line. Without a trace of irony, she dares to take on the old chestnut, love, and hold it up to a new light, a new day's moon, and tells us what she sees. It's a curious and difficult idea to map; nevertheless, she does a mighty good job