Ten long poems that try to do for America what Shakespeare did for England: turn history and legend into poetry. American Cycle, a sequence of long poems inspired by our folklore and past, was written over forty-seven years. Its themes are love, local mythology, history, justice, memory, accomplishment, time. "The books are extraordinary, sustained explosions of authentic American language and energy. Each is entirely different from the others in style, voice, form and narrative content; each so rich in imagery and nuance and texture and event and so finely crafted. . . " —Paul Williams, author of Bob Dylan: Performing Artist. Its styles are connected to our speech: Spanish words loaned from Old California, rough colloquialisms in Paul Bunyan, the power of African-American vernacular English in John Henry, bare oratory in Chief Joseph, old west phrases in Wyatt Earp, circus ballyhoo in P. T. Barnum, aviation jargon in Amelia Earhart, backwoods dialect  in Blue Ridge. As Walt Whitman says, "I hear America singing, the varied carols. . .�

From the country scenes of the poet's childhood to missives penned in the classroom where he served for many years, the poems in Larry Beckett's debut collection, At Some Time in My Life, sing with pride and prophecy. Whether fondly remembering his grandmother's Sunday table; addressing his former teaching colleagues; or decrying the atrocities of slavery and systemic racial injustice with the repeated declaration, "Call me by my name!," Beckett honors the struggles of his ancestors and calls upon the next generation of Americans to hold fast to the dream of liberty and justice for all. In verse that recalls Walt Whitman's optimism and Langston Hughes's musicality and keen political critique, Beckett reminds his readers once and for all that hope is the ultimate "builder / of the ruins left behind."

This is the poetry of the San Francisco Renaissance of the 50s, reconsidered as literature: Lawrence Ferlinghetti's lyrical cityscapes, Jack Kerouac's blues and haikus, Allen Ginsberg's saxophone prophecies, Gregory Corso's obsessive odes, John Wieners' true confessions, Michael McClure's physical hymns, Philip Lamantia's surreal passions, Gary Snyder's work songs, Philip Whalen's loose sutras, Lew Welch's hermit visions, David Meltzer's improvisations and discoveries, and Bob Kaufman's jazz meditations.

Scholarship dances with poetic intuition and insight. Skip the footnotes, or not. Larry Beckett generates where it's at, cats. -Dan Barth, poet and Beat scholar, author of Fast Women Beautiful: Zen, Beat, Baseball Poems

I was genuinely knocked-out by this] book. A generous & insightful work on poets writ w/ a poet's mindful heart. Because of its timeline, I assume (& hope) there will be more. It would seem immodest for me to blast a blurb, but my enthusiasm is genuine & immediate. -David Meltzer

Larry Beckett's vivid, highly readable testament to the Beats provides a useful introduction to this wild-side school-out-of-school of American poetry, identifying the movement's twentieth century "oral scripture" (to quote his essay on Philip Whalen) as enduring Gospel for the Millennium. - Tom Clark poet, author of Jack Kerouac: A Biography

Oh sure, it's all these poems by poets whose names sing in our blood as the heart pumps; but it took Larry Beckett to marry ink to paper in such a way that it appears the words are written on wedding sheets. - Robin Rule poet, publisher of Beckett's Songs and Sonnets

"4.5 out of 5 stars... an intriguing exploration of the history of Beats and their poetry." - Portland Book Review