Packing Up for Paradise: Selected Poems 1946-1996

From Kirkus Reviews paper 1-57423-052-2 Fifty years of poetry is here distilled into one fat volume by the West Coast filmmaker best known for the avant-garde classic Loony Tom (1951). Wildly indiscriminate, Broughton clings to a grab-bag mysticism throughout his career, and, like his mentor, Blake, he celebrates innocence in childlike ditties and develops a self-referential mythology thats at times impenetrable. Deliberately archaic, and full of sing-song repetition, Broughtons fractured nursery rhymes and street jingles are, at best, the charming ephemera of a self-described amorist who later proclaims, I am Polly Morphus, as if we didnt know, what with endless verse extolling Nipples and Cocks, the joys of fellatio, and all his other pagan appetites (including an expert ode to the phallus). But Broughtons boho goofiness, while charming in his early work, devolves into commonplace hippie grooviness (Nourish your bliss). A Whitmanesque catalogue of scenes from old L.A. (I Remember Los Angeles) stands out among the reams of self-indulgent and facile doggerel. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Product Description The theme of this copious selection from fifty years of James Broughton's poetry is Eros Ascendant and Transcendent. Since that's been Broughton's central theme all along, it's fair to say this book comprises his essential poetic testament.