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The Poetry of Jack Kerouac: Scattered Poems, The Scripture of the Golden Eternity, and Old Angel Midnight
From the iconic New York Times–bestselling author of On the Road: Three revolutionary collections of poetry in one volume.
Rebelling against the dry rules and literary pretentiousness he perceived in early twentieth-century poetry, Jack Kerouac pioneered a poetic style informed by oral tradition and driven by concrete language with neither embellishment nor abstraction. In these three groundbreaking collections, the legendary Beat writer offers a spontaneous, uncensored perspective on everything from religion to the structure of language itself.
Scattered Poems: Bringing together selections from literary journals and his private notebooks, Scattered Poems exemplifies Kerouac's innovative approach to language. Populated by hitchhikers, Chinese grocers, Buddhist saints, and cultural figures from Rimbaud to Harpo Marx, the poems evoke the primal and the sublime, the everyday and the metaphysical.
The Scripture of the Golden Eternity: During an unexplained fainting spell, Kerouac experienced a flash of enlightenment. A student of Buddhist philosophy, he recognized the experience as "satori," a moment of life-changing epiphany. The knowledge he gained in that instant is expressed in this volume of sixty-six prose poems with language that is both precise and cryptic, mystical and plain. His vision proclaims, "There are not two of us here, reader and writer, but one golden eternity."
Old Angel Midnight: A spontaneous writing project in the form of an extended prose poem, this sonorous and spiritually playful book is one of Kerouac's most boldly experimental works. Collected from five notebooks dating from 1956 to 1959—a time in which Kerouac was immersed in Buddhist theory—Old Angel Midnight captures the rhythms of the universe and secrets of the subconscious with stunning linguistic dexterity.
Rebelling against the dry rules and literary pretentiousness he perceived in early twentieth-century poetry, Jack Kerouac pioneered a poetic style informed by oral tradition and driven by concrete language with neither embellishment nor abstraction. In these three groundbreaking collections, the legendary Beat writer offers a spontaneous, uncensored perspective on everything from religion to the structure of language itself.
Scattered Poems: Bringing together selections from literary journals and his private notebooks, Scattered Poems exemplifies Kerouac's innovative approach to language. Populated by hitchhikers, Chinese grocers, Buddhist saints, and cultural figures from Rimbaud to Harpo Marx, the poems evoke the primal and the sublime, the everyday and the metaphysical.
The Scripture of the Golden Eternity: During an unexplained fainting spell, Kerouac experienced a flash of enlightenment. A student of Buddhist philosophy, he recognized the experience as "satori," a moment of life-changing epiphany. The knowledge he gained in that instant is expressed in this volume of sixty-six prose poems with language that is both precise and cryptic, mystical and plain. His vision proclaims, "There are not two of us here, reader and writer, but one golden eternity."
Old Angel Midnight: A spontaneous writing project in the form of an extended prose poem, this sonorous and spiritually playful book is one of Kerouac's most boldly experimental works. Collected from five notebooks dating from 1956 to 1959—a time in which Kerouac was immersed in Buddhist theory—Old Angel Midnight captures the rhythms of the universe and secrets of the subconscious with stunning linguistic dexterity.
- GenresPoetry
185 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 11, 2017
About the author
Jack Kerouac
407 books11.9k followersJean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac, known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation.
Of French-Canadian ancestry, Kerouac was raised in a French-speaking home in Lowell, Massachusetts. He "learned English at age six and spoke with a marked accent into his late teens." During World War II, he served in the United States Merchant Marine; he completed his first novel at the time, which was published more than 40 years after his death. His first published book was The Town and the City (1950), and he achieved widespread fame and notoriety with his second, On the Road, in 1957. It made him a beat icon, and he went on to publish 12 more novels and numerous poetry volumes.
Kerouac is recognized for his style of stream of consciousness spontaneous prose. Thematically, his work covers topics such as his Catholic spirituality, jazz, travel, promiscuity, life in New York City, Buddhism, drugs, and poverty. He became an underground celebrity and, with other Beats, a progenitor of the hippie movement, although he remained antagonistic toward some of its politically radical elements. He has a lasting legacy, greatly influencing many of the cultural icons of the 1960s, including Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Jerry Garcia and The Doors.
In 1969, at the age of 47, Kerouac died from an abdominal hemorrhage caused by a lifetime of heavy drinking. Since then, his literary prestige has grown, and several previously unseen works have been published.
Of French-Canadian ancestry, Kerouac was raised in a French-speaking home in Lowell, Massachusetts. He "learned English at age six and spoke with a marked accent into his late teens." During World War II, he served in the United States Merchant Marine; he completed his first novel at the time, which was published more than 40 years after his death. His first published book was The Town and the City (1950), and he achieved widespread fame and notoriety with his second, On the Road, in 1957. It made him a beat icon, and he went on to publish 12 more novels and numerous poetry volumes.
Kerouac is recognized for his style of stream of consciousness spontaneous prose. Thematically, his work covers topics such as his Catholic spirituality, jazz, travel, promiscuity, life in New York City, Buddhism, drugs, and poverty. He became an underground celebrity and, with other Beats, a progenitor of the hippie movement, although he remained antagonistic toward some of its politically radical elements. He has a lasting legacy, greatly influencing many of the cultural icons of the 1960s, including Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Jerry Garcia and The Doors.
In 1969, at the age of 47, Kerouac died from an abdominal hemorrhage caused by a lifetime of heavy drinking. Since then, his literary prestige has grown, and several previously unseen works have been published.
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July 5, 2023Recently I set out on a mission, a silly one, one sparked by aesthetic reasons, really. I saw a few pictures of Jack Kerouac and I decided to fall in love with him, pictures with his cat wouldn’t be enough, that’s too shallow, I obviously had to read his writing, and I decided to begin with his poetry. The thing is, I’m not sure if he’s known for his poetry, I think he’s known for On the Road, so it’s probably unfair to begin with his poetry, which doesn’t seem to be very well liked or popular at all, but I felt drawn to it the most. My copy of On the Road sits abandoned somewhere in the corner of this room as I write this review after reading a measly epub of this book.
I don’t think most of his poetry is particularly good, but I don’t think it’s bad, I think it’s fun and that I just didn’t get most of it. So much of it came off as almost delirious rambling to me and my eyes would glaze over and my mind could barely process what it was that he was trying to communicate. Though I gave him the benefit of the doubt and decided that it was his intention when a poem was just a collection of random words and sounds. The thing is, the rest of the poems, the coherent ones — those weren’t the best either, they weren’t memorable — I could just imagine him really working at each one, writing and writing, bent over the words, like a blacksmith hammering at a scrap of metal, clanging, clanging, trying to meld that scrap into something pretty, but it might never be, and somewhere along the way he might decide he doesn’t really want it to be pretty. What’s pretty, anyway, y’know? It’s still metal, it’s still a poem.
The poem titled Hymn, however, it’s different. It’s so special, maybe just to me, but he really put me there, maybe because I have been before. That takes skill, or it takes something. He gave me something, is what I mean, so for that I think this whole thing isn’t worth nothing. I really enjoyed his haikus, especially with the accompanying introduction, I think they’re lovely, though I don’t have much to say about them - I don’t think anything needs to be said, they’re short, simple, they take you somewhere. Just like Hymn did.
I just think he had fun writing a lot of these and I felt that, and I think that’s special, the feeling in them.
I don’t think most of his poetry is particularly good, but I don’t think it’s bad, I think it’s fun and that I just didn’t get most of it. So much of it came off as almost delirious rambling to me and my eyes would glaze over and my mind could barely process what it was that he was trying to communicate. Though I gave him the benefit of the doubt and decided that it was his intention when a poem was just a collection of random words and sounds. The thing is, the rest of the poems, the coherent ones — those weren’t the best either, they weren’t memorable — I could just imagine him really working at each one, writing and writing, bent over the words, like a blacksmith hammering at a scrap of metal, clanging, clanging, trying to meld that scrap into something pretty, but it might never be, and somewhere along the way he might decide he doesn’t really want it to be pretty. What’s pretty, anyway, y’know? It’s still metal, it’s still a poem.
The poem titled Hymn, however, it’s different. It’s so special, maybe just to me, but he really put me there, maybe because I have been before. That takes skill, or it takes something. He gave me something, is what I mean, so for that I think this whole thing isn’t worth nothing. I really enjoyed his haikus, especially with the accompanying introduction, I think they’re lovely, though I don’t have much to say about them - I don’t think anything needs to be said, they’re short, simple, they take you somewhere. Just like Hymn did.
I just think he had fun writing a lot of these and I felt that, and I think that’s special, the feeling in them.
July 30, 2019
When people talk about not liking poetry, they think of these.
Which kinda says it all doesn't it.
Well, another hole in the my English degree education filled.
The haikus were okay, but I think those were translations.
Which kinda says it all doesn't it.
Well, another hole in the my English degree education filled.
The haikus were okay, but I think those were translations.
February 1, 2021
Okay, we got it. It’s all about golden eternity!
September 16, 2025
Some are nonsense and some nonsense that makes sense is what I was looking for.
July 28, 2026
Only giving the extra star because I don't want to believe i didn't like something by Kerouac.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews