Empty Mirror

a literary magazine

  • About
    • About Empty Mirror
    • Get in Touch
    • Support EM
    • Colophon
  • Submit
  • Contributors
  • Essays
  • On Literature
  • Reviews
  • Poetry
  • Art
  • Interviews
  • Beat
    • Beat Generation
    • Ted Joans Lives!
  • +
    • Fiction
    • Music & Film
    • News
    • On Writing
    • Book Collecting

Beat Generation Authors, Poets & Artists

Here you'll find everything relating to the Beat Generation - biographies of the writers, poets, artists, and other players; interviews, book reviews, photo galleries, and more.

Remembering Vincent Zangrillo

Empty Mirror

Vincent Zangrillo

Last week when I logged into Facebook, I was saddened to see the post below, posted by Sensitive Skin. Vincent was a writer who attended The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at … [Read more...]

Notes on Three Lost Poems by Gregory Corso

Gregory Stephenson

Photo by Robert Wilson. Used by permission.

In a life of wide and restless travels, Gregory Corso produced six collections of poetry, together with a handful of plays and a novel, but left trailing in the wake of his urgent journeys an unknown … [Read more...]

Allen Ginsberg: Howl (for the queer and disabled Americans)

Ben Berman Ghan

Howl and Other Poems - Allen Ginsberg

David Bergman argues that New York is “a place of and for the imagination” (The Queer Writer in New York 1) that is central to what Bergman calls the American “Queer Imaginarium” (3), and because of … [Read more...]

Resisting the Thought Police: The Untold Story of Allen Ginsberg’s Stand Against College Censorship

Loretta Graceffo

Allen Ginsberg College Censorship - Pavan - Loretta Graceffo

Last year, entirely by accident, I stumbled upon a censorship scandal that had been buried for the past fifty years. The discovery happened at Saint Peter’s University, a small Jesuit school in … [Read more...]

Moving Towards the Light: The Triumph of Spirituality in the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg

Jessica Clark

Moving Towards the Light: the Triumph of Spirituality in the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg

Note: Chapter three was previously published in Beatdom. ∘∘∘ Pre-emptive of 1960s counter-culture, in which exploded artistic self-expression and a freer way of relating to … [Read more...]

Kerouac: The Last Quarter Century by Gerald Nicosia, reviewed by Kevin Riordan

Kevin Riordan

Kerouac: The Last Quarter Century by Gerald Nicosia book review

Kerouac: The Last Quarter Century by Gerald Nicosia / Noodlebrain Press/ 2019 “Don’t mention his name, and his name will pass on.” ---Streets of Laredo This is the approach I will use … [Read more...]

On the Dangerous Edge of Things: Weed: Adventures of a Dope Smuggler by Jerry Kamstra, reviewed by Gregory Stephenson

Gregory Stephenson

Jerry Kamstra Weed, reviewed

Weed: Adventures of a Dope Smuggler by Jerry Kamstra / Peer Amid Press / 2019 / 978-1-7335481-0-6 / 312 pages This is, to be sure, a tale of adventure – a non-fiction, first-person account of … [Read more...]

The Beatific Soul: A film featuring Kerouac biographer John J. Dorfner

John J. Dorfner

The Beatific Soul: A film about John J Dorfner

This short film by Franki Grigoni features John J. Dorfner, author of Kerouac: Visions of Rocky Mount and Kerouac: Visions of Lowell. It includes clips of Jack Kerouac and the road interspersed … [Read more...]

Visions, Symbols and Intertextuality: An Overview of William Blake’s Influence on Allen Ginsberg

Alexandre Ferrere

Visions, Symbols and Intertextuality: An Overview of William Blake's Influence on Allen Ginsberg by Alexandre Ferrere

In a compilation of his personal journals, The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice,1 Allen Ginsberg recalled a particular event, which had a strong impact on his career and on his spiritual approach to … [Read more...]

Before and After Desolation: Two Sojourns by Jack Kerouac at the Hotel Stevens

Gregory Stephenson

Before and After Desolation: Two Sojourns by Jack Kerouac at Seattle's Hotel Stevens

During the summer of 1956, Jack Kerouac stayed on two occasions at the Hotel Stevens in downtown Seattle. His first stay at the venerable old “skid row” hotel was in the latter part of June of that … [Read more...]

Memory Babes: The Legends of Proust and Kerouac

Mersiha Bruncevic

Memory Babes: The Legends of Proust and Kerouac Mersiha Bruncevic

It was recently announced that Peter Greenaway’s upcoming art installation would be a fully functioning racetrack with real cars inspired by Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. The iconic British artist and … [Read more...]

Love and the Titanic: Notes on Last Words: The Final Journals of William Burroughs

Lee Watkins

Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs

On July 30, 1997, William Burroughs wrote: Reading Titanic by Charles Pellegrino. Page 18. What is an experience if it is not shared? Did it even happen? What he wrote later that day is more … [Read more...]

An excerpt from World Citizen: Allen Ginsberg as Traveller by David S. Wills

David Wills

World Citizen: Allen Ginsberg as Traveller by David S. Wills

The following passage is an excerpt from World Citizen: Allen Ginsberg as Traveller. The events below took place in 1947, during Ginsberg’s first trip to a foreign country. Leaving America In late … [Read more...]

Allen Ginsberg’s Iron Curtain Journals, reviewed by Marc Olmsted

Marc Olmsted

Iron Curtain Journals by Allen Ginsberg

Iron Curtain Journals (January-May 1965) by Allen Ginsberg, edited by Michael Schumacher / University of Minnesota Press / Iron Curtain Journals covers a particularly interesting slice of … [Read more...]

Why Kerouac?

Rick Dale

Why Kerouac? Rick Dale

People say I’m obsessed with Jack Kerouac. They point to my blog, to my checked flannel shirts, to my over 140 Kerouac or Kerouac-related books (that I read, not that I wrote), to the one book I have … [Read more...]

The Ghost Sonata

Vincent Zangrillo

The Ghost Sonata - Vincent Zangrillo

Gregory Corso loved Patti Smith. Patti Smith loved Jim Carroll. Jim Carroll loved Ted Berrigan. Ted Berrigan loved Mark and Mark loved me. Once after Gregory was gone maybe two years, I’m not good … [Read more...]

Poetic Licence: The Crime and Hard Time of Gregory Corso, or A Portrait of the Poet as a Young Felon

Gregory Stephenson

Gregory Corso mug shot -- prison

“When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes I all alone beweep my outcast state. And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries. And look upon myself and curse my fate …” --- William … [Read more...]

Beat: The Latter Days of the Beat Generation, A First-Hand Account by Andy Clausen

Marc Olmsted

BEAT The Latter Days of the Beat Generation, A First-Hand Account - Andy Clausen

Beat -- The Latter Days of the Beat Generation, A First-Hand Account by Andy Clausen / Autonomedia / 17.95 Here's what I wrote about Andy Clausen when asked to write a blurb for his book of poetry … [Read more...]

The Buddhist Beat Poetics of Diane di Prima and Lenore Kandel by Max Orsini, reviewed by Marc Olmsted

Marc Olmsted

The Buddhist Beat Poetics of Diane di Prima and Lenore Kandel - Max Orsini

The Buddhist Beat Poetics of Diane di Prima and Lenore Kandel by Max Orsini / Beatdom Books / 224 pages / July 2018 / 978-0993409950 Within the all-pervasive expanse of the sky of great emptiness, … [Read more...]

Bob Kaufman’s Lonely Vigil – Michael Amundsen

Michael Amundsen

Bob Kaufman's Lonely Vigil by Michael Amundsen

Bob Kaufman the man is hard to pin down. His life is wrapped in mystery, legends, and hagiography. It was in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood where both the legend and the man began to take … [Read more...]

Being Michael Brownstein – Thomas Locicero

Thomas Locicero

Gotham Book Mart - Evan P. Cordes

Being Michael Brownstein We exit the underground at Penn Station, determined to walk, if only to breathe out the stench of urine from our Long Island lungs. She suggests we stop at Gotham Book … [Read more...]

Translating the Counterculture: The Reception of the Beats in Turkey by Erik Mortenson, reviewed by Marc Olmsted

Marc Olmsted

Translating the Counterculture: The Reception of the Beats in Turkey by Erik Mortenson

TRANSLATING THE COUNTERCULTURE The Reception of the Beats in Turkey by Erik Mortenson / Southern Illinois University Press / 978-0809336548 / 2018 The premise is a fascinating one. Erik Mortenson … [Read more...]

Now What’s Wrong? Reflections on Allen Ginsberg’s Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986-1992

Doren Robbins

Cosmopolitan Greetings by Allen Ginsberg

After the accomplishments of late nineteenth and early twentieth century experimentalists Whitman, Dickinson, Rimbaud, and the Modernist poets Apollinaire, Cendrars, Mayakovsky, Stevens, Williams, … [Read more...]

Celebrating ruth weiss on her 90th birthday

Horst Spandler

ruth and Hal Davis on their porch. Photo by Horst Spandler, 2013.

ruth was born in Berlin on June 24th, 1928 -- and what a life she’s had so far! Actually, it could have been very short-lived if she and her parents had not managed to escape from Nazi-Germany via … [Read more...]

Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg: A Story of Influences

Alexandre Ferrere

Allen Ginsberg photo by Larry Keenan / Walt Whitman

The well-known link between Allen Ginsberg and Walt Whitman comes from both Ginsberg's readers and Ginsberg himself. One of the first explicit mentions of Walt Whitman in Ginsberg's published poetry … [Read more...]

a toast to ti-jean in a liverpool gloom saloon

Marlie Centawer

Marlie Centawer - a toast to ti-jean in a liverpool gloom saloon

12 March 2018 It is said that a woman haunts, she sees everything. An observer, a writer, a siren of dreams. In my heart and mind, I am always searching for slivers of paradise while being silently … [Read more...]

Jack Kerouac: Avatar of American Buddhism

Michael Amundsen

Kerouac: Avatar for American Buddhism by Michael Amundsen

"I have nothing to offer but my own confusion." -- JK It is intriguing that secular, educated Americans often have difficulty with the rituals and story of Christianity, seeing it as irrational, … [Read more...]

The Guardian and the Familiar: William S. Burroughs and Cats

Lee Watkins

William S. Burroughs and Cats

“O fiery river “Spread over this American land. “Drown out the falsity, the smug contempt “For what does not pay … “What would you pay Christ to die again?” -- Kenneth Patchen, from “O Fiery … [Read more...]

I, Too, at the Beginning by Ted Joans

Ted Joans

Ted Joans

I, Too, at the Beginning I am the early Black Beat I read with some of the Best Beat minds When the Apple was Beat Generating I lived in Greenwich Village I was there Where I read poems and … [Read more...]

And When I Die, I Won’t Stay Dead: a review of the Bob Kaufman documentary

Jared Feldschreiber

THE POET KNOWS HE MUST WRITE THE TRUTH, EVEN IF HE IS KILLED FOR IT, FOR THE SPHINX CANNOT BE DENIED -- Bob Kaufman, "THE POET" The life and times of Bob Kaufman, the influential and … [Read more...]

Here to Learn: Remembering Paul Bowles by Mark Terrill

Mark Terrill

Here to Learn: Remembering Paul Bowles by Mark Terrill

In the spring of 1982 I was working as a deck machinist on a cable-laying ship based out of Norfolk, Virginia. In a copy of the Village Voice that I’d picked up while on shore leave, I saw an … [Read more...]

Neeli Cherkovski’s Elegy For My Beat Generation, reviewed by Yannis Livadas

Yannis Livadas

Elegy For My Beat Generation - poetry by Neeli Cherkovski

Elegy For My Beat Generation by Neeli Cherkovski / Lithic Press / 978-0-9975017-9-7 The Beat Generation as a literary phenomenon was over, or more correctly, was completed, with the last works of … [Read more...]

Passing Through: Allen Ginsberg & Peter Orlovsky in Copenhagen, January 1983

Gregory Stephenson

ginsberg-orlovsky-stephenson

As part of their reading tour through a dozen European countries, poets Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky, and their musical accompanist Steven Taylor, arrive by train in Copenhagen in the chill dark … [Read more...]

The Intersection of Buddhism and the Beat Generation

Sean Negus

The Intersection of Buddhism and the Beat Generation

The 1950s in America was not a period known for its religious diversity. The spiritual consumerism that we know today had yet to be established and the post-War era was defined by adherence to … [Read more...]

Junk Nightmares

Lee Watkins

William Burroughs, portrait by Graziano Origa, pen & ink, 1997

William Burroughs was troubled in his childhood by a “fear of nightmares.” The dreams themselves weren’t always so bad. Like when he seemed to wake to find little men playing in a block house he’d … [Read more...]

Visions of Cody, a book of martyrdom

Yannis Livadas

"Time is the purest and cheapest form of doom." -- Jack Kerouac Apropos Kerouac, I think that there is nothing more important, more significant today, than reading his books and evaluate them … [Read more...]

Book Review — First Thought: Conversations with Allen Ginsberg

Marc Olmsted

Conversations with Allen Ginsberg

First Thought: Conversations with Allen Ginsberg edited by Michael Schumacher / University of Minnesota Press / March 17, 2017 / 978-0816699179 Michael Schumacher is one of the major scholars of … [Read more...]

Out to Lunch with William Burroughs: Who Owns the Dropper Owns the Fix

Leon Horton

William S. Burroughs collage (detail) by Stephen James

It was summer 1991, I think, when sharing a joint on a brick fire escape after a night of acid-tapped cartoon lunacy, my friend Steve exhaled smoke into the Manchester morning and casually asked if … [Read more...]

Jack Kerouac’s Creative Birth

Paul Maher Jr.

The Creative Birth of Jack Kerouac

Excerpted from manuscript titled I Live In Two Worlds: The Literary Cosmos of Jack Kerouac to be published by Rowman & Littlefield in late 2017   We first read a hand-written time-wheel … [Read more...]

Prelude to Big Sur: Kerouac in Spring & Summer 1960

Paul Maher Jr.

Big Sur - Kerouac

It is sunny, no humidity in the late spring of 1960. A brisk breeze blows in Northport, Long Island where Jack Kerouac has made his home with his mother for two years now. He sits in his yard … [Read more...]

Next Page »

DONATE TO BLACK LIVES MATTER

BLACK LIVES MATTER

The EM newsletter

Receive fresh poetry, reviews, essays, art, and literary news every Wednesday!

R.I.P. Michael McClure 1932-2020

Empty Mirror

Established in 2000 and edited by Denise Enck, Empty Mirror is an online literary magazine that publishes new work each Friday.

Each week EM features several poems each by one or two poets; reviews; critical essays; visual art; and personal essays.

Subscribe Submissions Support

Recent features

  • My Father’s Map
  • On Waiting
  • Seeing Las Meninas in Madrid, 1994
  • Visual poems from 23 Bodhisattvas by Chris Stephenson
  • Historical Punctum: Reading Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia and Native Guard Through the Lens of Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida
  • Panic In The Rear-View Mirror: Exploring The Work of Richard Siken and Ann Gale
  • “Art has side effects,” I said.

Books

Biblio
© 2000–2021 D. Enck / Empty Mirror.
Copyright of all content remains with its authors.
Privacy Policy · Privacy Tools · FTC disclosures