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...]
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.
Notes on Three Lost Poems by Gregory Corso
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)
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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?
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
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
“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
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
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
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...]
