The Beat Goes On by Danny Gray

Perfect Bound paperback

ISBN: 978-1-326-28504-3 

The Beat Goes On is the third collection of Danny’s Modernist Beat Poetry. His feel for lyrical rhythm is still much in evidence and the swing of the words and the lines still sit firmly within that Beat cadence so well - but the overarching feel that runs throughout this collection is - love. Unabashed and deftly detailed in multiple ways across the pieces, whether it’s love for a time, a place, a person, a pet, an item of clothing - or indeed several items of clothing - love echoes across the pages. Even when let down by it, love’s motifs and nuance flow as freely as the words on the page.

Danny Gray is like a modern-day street corner existentialist, wielding a battered notebook instead of a soapbox, a working class Beat poet for the 21st century. Drawing on the raw edge of punk attitude, the freewheeling energy of the Beat Generation, and the introspective angst of existential thinkers like Camus and Bukowski, Gray’s writing is part protest, part confession, and part search for meaning in the everyday grime of modern life. His poems are urban sketches of the human condition, scribbled in the margins of a society he refuses to conform to. He confronts hypocrisy, addiction, alienation, and spiritual longing with a blunt honesty that never shies away from the ugly truths of existence. There are echoes of Ginsberg’s howl, Kerouac’s wanderlust, and a gritty kitchen sink realism that makes his voice unmistakably his own. In doing so, Gray invites readers to question the structures that bind them and to reclaim their own battered sense of freedom, one verse at a time.