From Library Journal
You won't find these poems between the covers of The New Yorker ; instead, you'll find them on the streets of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago--wherever the heartbeat moves to the speeded-up rhythm of daily urban life. The poems here are more pop-modern than postmodern, more MTV than MLA. It's as though Beatty had found a way to plug in his be-bob mind to the outlet of language and instead of stream of consciousness there pours out a flood of consciousness of a young man growing up in late-20th-century America who sings the culture electric: "where baseball players/ are reborn/ in their prime/ to play in modern day times/ and not only was the ball white/ shoeless Joe Jackson was white/ all the dead white players was white/ taking batting practice in white home uniforms/ under white Iowa clouds" ("Darryl Strawberry Asleep in a Field of Dreams"). This is the first volume in the "New Cafe" series, the publishing arm of the multicultural, multigenerational center for the spoken arts in New York known as the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Recommended for contemporary poetry collections.
- Thom Tammaro, Moorhead Univ., Minn.Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
