Plot Summary

Outrider is a portal into fast-speaking poet Anne Waldman and her six decades birthing vibrant communities of poets, performers, and activists—from Greenwich Village, St. Mark's Poetry Project, and Naropa University 'Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics,' onwards to Mexico City, Casablanca, and more. Guided by ancestors of the Beat generation and poetic kinships with radical female musicians—Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, Cecilia Vicuña, Meredith Monk—Outrider celebrates Waldman's role as a visionary word-worker and a transcendent presence, singing out in the ancient, bardic tradition the thunderous power of poetry.