<TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText language="eng">City Lights Pocket Poets </TitleText>

City Lights Books onix@onixsuite.com 20130217 eng

GCDS-9780872864856 03 01 City Lights Books 01 GCOI 87286100220120 02 0872864855 03 9780872864856 15 9780872864856 BC 01 305 <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText language="eng">City Lights Pocket Poets </TitleText> <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText>Tau By Philip Lamantia and Journey to the End By John Hoffman</TitleText> <Subtitle>Pocket Poets Number 59</Subtitle> 1 A01 Lamantia, Philip Philip Lamantia 2 A01 Hoffman, John John Hoffman 01 eng 150 01 "You will probably be our greatest living poet since Whitman."-Henry Miller, letter to Philip Lamantia, 1/26/55The latest installment of the Pocket Poets Series presents two long-lost books from the classic Beat period. Tau is Philip Lamantia's mystical second collection of poems, slated for publication in 1955 but suppressed by the poet due to his evolving religious beliefs. Mysterious and austere, the poems of Tau are an essential addition to Lamantia's published work, documenting the period between his teenage surrealist debut Erotic Poems (1946) and the religious poems of Ekstasis (1959), also the period of his closest association with Kenneth Rexroth. Later in 1955, when he participated in the 6 Gallery reading where Allen Ginsberg debuted"Howl," Lamantia read none of his own work, instead reading the poems of his best friend, John Hoffman (1928-1952), a legendary Beat poet who died of unknown causes in Mexico at age 24. An archetype of the Beat-era hipster-tall, lean, goateed, and bespectacled-Hoffman is depicted along with Lamantia and others in "Howl," as well as in Kerouac's The Dharma Bums (1958). Yet despite its literary and historical importance, Hoffman's work has never before been published. Journey to the End makes available for the first time all of Hoffman's surviving poems, an event for scholars and fans of Beat literature. Presented together in a single volume, Tau and Journey to the End are two of the most significant recent additions to the Beat canon. The volume also includes Lamantia's commentary on his friend's life and work, poems by Lamantia dedicated to Hoffman, and detailed biographical notes on both poets.<a target="blank" href="http://youtube.com/profile_videos?user=Kolourmeim">Footage</a> of readings from the Tau/Journey to the End celebration at Moe's Books in Berkeley on April 22, 2008Praise for Tau and Journey to the End:"Here are Philip Lamantia's light-scattering jewels of the Fifties!" - Michael McClure, author of Huge Dreams: San Francisco and Beat Poems "The rediscovery of Tau is the literary equivalent of finding lost treasure. Alchemical gold--blood of pure imagination--courses through these lines by the magus of American poetry." -Andrew Joron, author of The Cry at Zero: Selected Prose 02 Two new books from the classic Beat period: mystical poems by Philip Lamantia and the long-lost "Six Gallery" poems by legendary hipster John Hoffman. 08 "These are the early poems of Philip Lamantia that he was supposed to read at the famous Six Gallery reading in 1955, when Allen Ginsberg read "Howl." Philip had misgivings about these poems, because he didn't think that they were worthy of his newly-found or re-found Catholic faith. From 2008 it's hard to see the problem: "On a smiling crevice of street,/He cuts, for death, the diamond of her eye:/ Star plumed hands put it/Burning on his brow." Sounds pretty Fra Angelico to us. John Hoffman (1928-1952) was Philip's friend who died young and wrote luminous Zen-inspired works. 'Therefore unattained is/ The sudden attainment.'" —Andrei Codrescu Exquisite Corpse-Journal of Letters and Life 08 “The seventeen poems that make up Tau may well force a reevaluation by scholars of Lamantia’s evolution as a poet and  realign the stars above the Beat Parnassus in the process. In terms  of their sheer troping power, the poems are startlingly inventive,  achieving their strange ambition with astonishing verve. In fact, it  is Lamantia’s vatic stance and tone, consistent throughout these  poems, that demands admiration. These are a young person’s  poems, filled with the mystical fervor of someone who believes he  is discovering and revealing new worlds.” —Brian Jackson The Beat Review 08 "In contrast to both the erotic rhapsodist of his early love poems and the demonic master of explosive imagery of his later works, Tau reveals a poet both anguished and elegant, a poet at home with doubt and dread, hermetic and devotional, for whom inner distances are the depths we as pilgrims and readers travel towards. . .Hoffman's work is the perfect compliment, equally dedicated to the presence of what each poet would have understood as the Absolute. . .Tau and Journey to the End are indispensable works that have never been read." –Joseph Donahue Brooklyn Rail Review 08 "Recovered and salvaged poems, biographical detective work, historical infilling, all in one perfectly formed little volume.  City Lights are to be applauded for publishing this.  Essential, absolutely essential for any reader of that Beats and all that means." —Kevin Ring Beat Scene 08 "Tau is finally ours to explore. Its 17 poems capture the poet when we have least knowledge of him, and seem to bear witness to a crucial juncture, shot through with tense, self-interrogative formalities that close in on themselves as much as they open to jazz. . .      Phillip Lamantia and his friend, John Hoffman, speak to us in this book as if they were among us. The vivacity of their refusals, their revelations, their derangements, and the poems they left as witness then, will give us pause. And perhaps, for those open to it,  this book will prompt us to consider, or re-consider, who and what has moved us most to risk what we can and cannot in our search for the marvelous, whenever and wherever we have found it; whenever and wherever it has found us.      Included in the volume are texts by Garret Caples, the book’s editor, who provides the kind of historical context and sensitive poetic commentary that readers will benefit from." —Allan Graubard Pacific Rim Review of Books 04 02 72 01 http://www.citylights.com/resources/titles/87286100220120/images/87286100220120L.gif 07 02 72 01 http://www.citylights.com/resources/titles/87286100220120/images/87286100220120S.gif http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100220120 City Lights Publishers 01 City Lights Publishers 20080215 08 16 oz City Lights Books 01 WORLD 20 20080215 01 02 12.95 USD