A Different Beat: Writing by Women of the Beat Generation

Too many of these 125 pieces of verse, memoir and fiction seem to depend on some connection to the beat icons--a crew whose youth has withered in far too many books. Once again, we get the con man Neal Cassady (in a memoir by Carolyn Cassady) and we get ratty Jack, the alcoholic Kerouac trying to force one or another wife or girlfriend to have an abortion (in memoirs by Joan Haverty Kerouac and Frankie ""Edie"" Kerouac-Parker). Memoirs are very popular in this collection, and for good reason--in many ways the beat movement resembled a high-school clique, with personality and judgments of cool and uncool at a premium. There are some surprising treasures here nonetheless--the poems of Elise Cowen and Fran Landesman, for instance, which, with a minimum of work, make a maximum out of verbal transparency--reminding one of Stevie Smith's verse, or Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience. More typical of the tone of the anthology is Diane di Prima's account of her strenuous, implausible couplings with a junky boyfriend. In this frothy piece, one sees an odd resemblance to the advertising copy that the beats claimed to revile. Both offer substitutes for the real thing. (Nov.)