Which part of the human mind will finalize our fate? The part that wrote the Gettysburg Address - or the part that murdered Abraham Lincoln? The Beatin' Path - a lyrical guide to lucid evolution levels a look at both the enemies of human progress and the better angels of our nature.
The cast of this collection includes the bird who wouldn't fly, Flim and Flam (the richest men in the world), Satchel Paige, Galileo, Moondoggie, the monster and the fool, Abraham and Onan, George Orwell, Charles Darwin, young Hector, and the alchemist's apprentice. Presented in short bursts of truth, The Beatin' Path is an illustrated, inspirational kaleidoscope of poetry and prose, of heroes and villains, of humour and of hope.
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[Do not fear / the path you walk, for fear will not protect you MANTRA FOR A PANTHER IN A ROOM FULL OF METRONOMES]***
(Global Arts Ltd, 7 January 2017, 312 pages, copy from @JKSlitpublicity and voluntarily reviewed)
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This is my first time reading the author. I'm not sure what to make of The Beatin' Path. It's not like any poem collection I've ever read. That's not necessarily a good thing. I enjoyed much about The Beatin' Path. There's a cynical wryness to the work I liked. I enjoyed the range of styles and subject matter. The collection is heavily illustrated throughout and this works for the most part. There's a blend of poetry and prose and it's not always easy to tell one from the other. The Beatin' Path contains shorts prose extracts. Any poems were just prose chopped into the shape of a poem. I struggled to find any. The Beatin' Path is fun and full of oddness and surprises. Sometimes this works but mostly it doesn't. Due to the range of styles and the way the pieces are structured I felt distanced from the work and never quite connected with it. The Beatin' Path is a clever idea but never quite achieves its potential.
