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 life. In July 1948, that is to say eight years before the … [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 July, Allen asked Neal to accompany him to Texas. He’d … [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 time in Allen Ginsberg's writing, Jan.-May 1965, … [Read more...]
Being Michael Brownstein – Thomas Locicero
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 Mart. I spend two hundred dollars on books and … [Read more...]
Now What’s Wrong? Reflections on Allen Ginsberg’s Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986-1992
After the accomplishments of late nineteenth and early twentieth century experimentalists Whitman, Dickinson, Rimbaud, and the Modernist poets Apollinaire, Cendrars, Mayakovsky, Stevens, Williams, H.D., Lorca, Vallejo and Neruda---every poet runs the … [Read more...]
Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg: A Story of Influences
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 is to be found in a 1954 poem entitled “Siesta in Xbalba … [Read more...]
Passing Through: Allen Ginsberg & Peter Orlovsky in Copenhagen, January 1983
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 of an afternoon in early January of 1983. Birgit and I … [Read more...]
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 familial and traditional values, including a religious … [Read more...]
Book Review — First Thought: 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 Allen Ginsberg, and has thus far written the best … [Read more...]
(Part I) The School(girl) of Disembodied Poetics by Alison Winfield-Burns
This is the first excerpt of six. Here are all of the installments: Part I · Part II · Part III · Part IV · Part V · Part VI “I wrote my memoir at the request of my sweetheart Sam, who said he wanted to ‘know … [Read more...]
Allen Ginsberg’s Typewriter and 2 more poems by Jim Bennett
Allen Ginsberg's typewriter I bought Allen Ginsberg's portable Olivetti typewriter from a pawnshop in Liverpool where he had left it on an Autumn day in 1965 (I had to pay a bit extra for it because it had his initials, along with … [Read more...]
Five poems on the Beat Generation
Jan Kerouac Baby Driver "Looking for adventure in whatever comes my way I was a true nature's child Born to be wild-----" Steppenwolf Dreams of Hawaiian island paradise home ends up in a hopped up car chase, shotgun seat riding with a mad … [Read more...]
Book Review — Wait Til I’m Dead: Uncollected Poems by Allen Ginsberg
Wait Till I'm Dead: Uncollected Poems by Allen Ginsberg (Bill Morgan, ed.) / Grove Press / hardcover When I first heard about this book of uncollected poems by Allen Ginsberg, I imagined a slim volume of "b-sides" that would be "for the completist" as … [Read more...]
Book Review — Ivy League Bohemians
Note: Ivy League Bohemians is no longer available. However, Alison's new book on the same topic, The Jack Kerouac School(girl) of Disembodied Poetics, has been serialized in Empty Mirror. It is an irony of the Beat Generation and New York Schools that … [Read more...]
The Howl Hat
My friend Sylvain went to San Francisco recently and brought us back some souvenirs as gifts. One of the places he'd visited on his trip had been City Lights Books. He brought me a t-shirt from there. And he also brought me one of the most complicated … [Read more...]
Aural Dialectics: On Allen Ginsberg’s Musical Rendition of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience
William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789) is a collection of illuminated poems separated into two groupings, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, that engage with their respective, eponymous forces and ostensibly present them as a … [Read more...]
Movie Review – Kill Your Darlings
Long before Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William S. Burroughs would be celebrated as the poetical and political figureheads of a 'beat generation,' there was a murder. In the new film, Kill Your Darlings, the crime scene sets itself at Columbia … [Read more...]
Ginsberg and Lowell
the alignment of planets parents and the cost of going ensured that I missed the Albert Hall in 1965 it was just an early disappointment and not outstanding because over years it joined many other disappointments too disappointing to … [Read more...]
Six poems by Patrick Mackay
Jack Spicer and the Loyalty Oath “The testing of a University faculty by oath is a stupid and insulting procedure. If this oath is to have the effect of eliminating Communists from the faculty, we might as logically eliminate murderers from the faculty … [Read more...]
Two Songs for Samson: An Invective Poem for Carl Solomon
Two Songs for Samson (an invective poem) for Carl Solomon Where goes your nose, Old Sam? How mighty a germ that nestled there Could cause so mighty a blow? Does a note so dissonant exist To chip your granite ear? Are there sights such … [Read more...]
Beat Generation film – Kill Your Darlings trailer released!
Kill Your Darlings dramatizes an actual event that took place in 1944, as the writers who would later be identified with the Beat Generation became embroiled in a murder that made headlines. While attending Columbia University, Allen Ginsberg became … [Read more...]
Two Poems by Alessandra Bava
Apres Nous, Le Chaos (to Lawrence Ferlinghetti) In the bookstore the voice slowly uncurls some pages of life, revealing Allen's loss: "There is a HUGE HOLE in the sky" - That … [Read more...]
Review – The Beats: A Very Short Introduction by David Sterritt
The Beats: A Very Short Introduction by David Sterritt / Oxford University Press / 978-0-19-979677-9 / 126 pages David Sterritt's work might be familiar to Beat or film aficionados through his previous books, which include Mad to be Saved: The Beats, … [Read more...]
Charged Vision: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg
The photographs of Allen Ginsberg recently were on display at the Jewish Contemporary Museum in San Francisco. Walking through the museum is like going on a jaunt through Beat History. A spritely Jack Kerouac followed by the drunk. A youthful William … [Read more...]
Cry, Exploration, Ceremony
Oppositional postmodernist literature is associated with the Beat movement and came about after the terrible, unforeseen destruction of World War II. While the modernists were positive about the human spirit and mankind’s ability to progress to an ever … [Read more...]
Ginsberg’s Refrigerator
In Allen’s tenement flat at 170 East 2nd Street, even the refrigerator is an outlet of poetry. The picture in black and white shows a handle pointing north. On the off-white surface a picture of Edgar Allan Poe is glued on the left, one of … [Read more...]
Ginsberg at the Grey
How belly they aged, your friends, how hard the young years, every look, an eye for an eye, rapscallions when this country had corners rounded to secret, sweet places unfound by blab and tweet. In that famous photo, which stood over my desk so many … [Read more...]
Celebrating Allen Ginsberg’s birthday with a few videos
In honor of Allen Ginsberg's birthday (June 3, 1926), we've gathered a few videos together. We've got some poetry for you, a chant, and an interview or two. What are your favorite Ginsberg recordings? Please leave a comment below! Allen Ginsberg … [Read more...]
Review – Alleycats and Beatsters: The Hip, the Gone, and the Way Gone
Alleycats and Beatsters, a collection of essays by British writer Kenton Crowther, explores what it means to be Beat, the nature of hipness, and the poets, writers and hipsters who orbited the Beats, either closely or from a distance. This isn't a … [Read more...]
Three pieces for Beat poets
1 For Eileen Myles (New Generation Beat) He licked his lips but not at me. I watched his eyes walk by, glazedly, hanging their thumbs on their belt loops oh so casual. We had only just arrived and he was already leaving but of course that was … [Read more...]
Book Review – Beatitude: A Novel by Larry Closs
Beatitude by Larry Closs / Rebel Satori Press / 2011 / 978-1608640294 / 272 pages Empty Mirror received a copy of Beatitude from the author, with no obligation. ] Larry Closs' debut novel focuses on Harry Charity, who is gay, and his relationship … [Read more...]
The Language of Bebop: Syncopated Sounds and Rhythms in Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’
America, mid-twentieth century. Wearied by civilization, excesses and ornamentation, complications and. All precursors to extinction: The drone of war, the machinery of death, the atomic bomb, crew cuts, grey flannel, and hydrogen … [Read more...]
Beat Generation Photos by Rob Lee
[Editor's note: These photos are small! This page was first created many years ago for smaller screens. I have larger photos somewhere and will update this page as soon as possible.] Shig MuraoOctober 16,1989 Shig was one of the founders of City … [Read more...]
A. D. Winans: 11 Photographs
Legendary Poet, Lyricist Pete Brown
On June 16 ("Bloomsday"), 1964, Pete Brown gave the first ever poetry reading at Morden Tower, now a literary landmark in Newcastle, England. The Morden Tower Readings, conceived and organized by Tom and Connie Pickard, went on to host readings by more … [Read more...]
Chorus of Poets Gather for Allen Ginsberg “Howl” Celebration (2005)
A horn call sounded the start of the 50th anniversary celebration of Allen Ginsberg's first public reading of his masterpiece Howl, on this occasion, Oct. 7, 2005 at Skylight Books in Los Feliz Village in Los Angeles. "Howl" was read by a chorus of local … [Read more...]
