[.ca] Trip Trap: Haiku On The Road (ISBN 0912516046)

WILLYS JEEP HAIKU:
TRIP TRAP IS YET ANOTHER ADDITION TO KEROUAC'S LEGEND, A SWEET LITTLE COLLABORATION. THIS BOOK TIES IN BEAUTIFULLY WITH BIG SUR (YOU'LL SEE) AND SHOULD BE PLACED NEXT TO IT ON THE SHELF. LEARN MORE ABOUT HAIKU; READ THIS BOOK.

Three voices, one volume:
"Trip Trap: Haiku on the Road" represents a collaborative effort by Jack Kerouac, Albert Saijo, and Lew Welch. There is also an editor's note by Donald Allen. The book is divided into 4 main sections. "A Recollection," by Saijo, is an 11 page memoir of the road trip during which the poems in the book were written. "We Started for New York," also about the trip, is the opening of an unfinished novel by Welch. The main text, "Trip Trap," is a body of poetry attributed to all three as a collaborative effort. And finally, "Dear Jack" is a collection of letters (dated 1959-60) from Welch to Kerouac. "Trip Trap" is thus, despite its short length (69 + vii pages), a diverse text with a fascinating history behind it. The poems are not haiku in the strictest sense; I would call them "haiku-like." The poems offer some interesting imagery and reflections on the American landscape, as well as a number of literary references. We get many glimpses from the men's journey--radio antennas in Texas, cows in Nebraska, a cross on an Arizona highway, etc. A particularly interesting section involves a Saijo haiku with alternate versions by Welch and Kerouac. The book overall is infused with the sense of discovery one gets in traveling across the USA. Saijo notes that the poetry in the book "has the fathomless art of random speech overheard through the course of a day." I really enjoyed "Trip Trap."

One To Avoid Unless You're A Real Fan:
Lew Welch and Jack Kerouac...two of my favorite writers on the road with Albert Saijo (who turns out to be a fine memoirist) right after Kerouac's roaring success with On The Road. There they are madly yapping away in front seat and back of Lew's jeepster Willy, rushing through the nights and days of innocent (well, really not so) America, and stopping once in a while to record it all in haiku. It's got to be a classic, right? Think again. Sure there are one or two good haiku to be found in the collection, and Grey Wolf Press includes enough supporting material to add context and some pith to the purchase, but this book is really for the die-hard Gotta-Have-It-All-Right-Down-To-The-Laundry-Lists-fans of beatdom. Ring of Bone, On The Road, and just about every other book written by these greats will give you more for your money.

It pays to be talented and famous:
Such "haiku" - "They make good coffee / in Oklahoma" - not particularly haiku, not particularly interesting ... if I wrote the lines, they certainly wouldn't be published ... there are other similarly brilliant entries: "There's Mister I-Cower- / under-My Car" or brilliant stand-alone lines "Whore candy". Trip Trap leaves me unimpressed. However, the book contains a recollection of the trip by Albert Saijo, the trip as described in an unfinished work of Lew Welch, Trip Trap itself which is a collaborative effort between those two and Jack Kerouac, and finally some letters of Lew Welch to Jack Kerouac. The net result is a book that gives insight into the beat movement and into the minds of Kerouac and Welch. For those with even a slight interest in either topic, this is an interesting and informative book.