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Title: Still Rationalizing, Still Self-Justifying . . .
Review: Denise Levertov never was, and never will be, a so-called "Beat" writer: she could actually write. (Which means she knew that the most basic rule of writing is: rewriting.) Any more than she will be diminished and narrowed by the so-called "feminists" who insist she was a "woman writer" therefore only suitable for women readers (to which ideological morons she delivered swift kicks to the teeth).And no amount of effort to drag her, kicking and screaming, into the "Beat" "canon," will succeed, or succeed in giving that "canon" a "class" and credibility it mostly didn't earn and doesn't deserve. Kerouac might have been able to write -- if, that is, he'd tried the language- and reader-respecting work of rewriting. But nothing will cure Ginsberg of the reality that he was 99 per cent vapid masturbatory windbag.
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