In the 1950s, the authors of the Beat Generation helped introduce American readers to Eastern philosophies and, in particular, to Buddhism. Poets like Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and Jack Kerouac are often credited with this phenomenon, while, as is so often the case, the women are sidelined.

In this illuminating new study, Max Orsini examines the impact of two female poets, Diane di Prima and Lenore Kandel, in shaping American Buddhist poetics. Orsini charts the evolution of their poetry against a backdrop of cultural conservatism, and explores the journeys they set out on that were very different from those trodden by their male counterparts.