Beyond Exile

Beyond Exile is the second part of Lawrence Johns' epic poem on the cultural roots of American consciousness. Pulitzer-nominated Love And Hate told the story of the rise and fall of Haight Ashbury in the Sixties through the eyes of the Diggers. Beyond Exile carries the narrative though the psychology, politics and dark magic of the Seventies as Frank Glendover meets up with Carlos the Jackal spinning strange dreams in Exile. If Love And Hate was Johns' Iliad, Beyond Exile is his Odyssey and Oedipus Rex. Lawrence Johns has been called the Poet Laureate of the Counterculture, and Beyond Exile, with its ancient Welsh stylings of free verse, its sex and adventure, its philosophical and and theological inventions, provides brilliant new evidence of a Johns counterhistory that revalues the intent and function of American poetry.