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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...]

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...]

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...]

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...]

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...]

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...]

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...]

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...]

(Part I) Alison Winfield-Burns memoir

Alison Winfield Burns

Alison Winfield-Burns memoir

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 (Part I) The School(girl) of … [Read more...]

Allen Ginsberg’s Typewriter and 2 more poems by Jim Bennett

Jim Bennett

olivetti

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 … [Read more...]

Five poems on the Beat Generation

Alan Catlin

southbound / credit: em

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 … [Read more...]

Book Review — Wait Til I’m Dead: Uncollected Poems by Allen Ginsberg

Marc Olmsted

Allen Ginsberg Wait Til I'm Dead Uncollected Poems

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 … [Read more...]

Book Review — Ivy League Bohemians

Joshua Preston

Ivy League Bohemians by Alison Winfield Burns

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 … [Read more...]

The Howl Hat

Jason Stoneking

Allen Ginsberg - HOWL

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. … [Read more...]

Aural Dialectics: On Allen Ginsberg’s Musical Rendition of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Chris Mustazza

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 … [Read more...]

Movie Review – Kill Your Darlings

David Meadows

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 … [Read more...]

Ginsberg and Lowell

Jim Bennett

Allen Ginsberg by Larry Keenan. Robert Lowell by Elsa Dorfman. Both copyright by their respective creators

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 … [Read more...]

Six poems by Patrick Mackay

Patrick Mackay

union: credit: em

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 … [Read more...]

Two Songs for Samson: An Invective Poem for Carl Solomon

Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino

Carl Solomon - Mishaps, Perhaps

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 … [Read more...]

Beat Generation film – Kill Your Darlings trailer released!

Empty Mirror News

Kill Your Darlings Movie Trailer

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 … [Read more...]

Two Poems by Alessandra Bava

Alessandra Bava

cobblestones

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 … [Read more...]

Review – The Beats: A Very Short Introduction by David Sterritt

Denise Enck

The Beats: A 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 … [Read more...]

Charged Vision: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg

Corey Wade

Jack Kerouac by 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 … [Read more...]

Cry, Exploration, Ceremony

Winnie Khaw

Howl by Allen Ginsberg / Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko / Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich.

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 … [Read more...]

Ginsberg’s Refrigerator

Alessandra Bava

Photo credit: Rich Anderson / CC BY-SA / photoshopped by Empty Mirror

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 … [Read more...]

Ginsberg at the Grey

Merridawn Duckler

Photo credit: Joybot / CC BY-SA

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 … [Read more...]

Celebrating Allen Ginsberg’s birthday with a few videos

Denise Enck

Allen Ginsberg

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 … [Read more...]

Review – Alleycats and Beatsters: The Hip, the Gone, and the Way Gone

Denise Enck

How Hip Was My Alley by Kenton Crowther

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, … [Read more...]

Three pieces for Beat poets

Jillian Moreno

downstairs

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 … [Read more...]

The Language of Bebop: Syncopated Sounds and Rhythms in Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’

Nicole Henares

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 … [Read more...]

Beat Generation Photos by Rob Lee

Rob Lee

rob lee poets photos

[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 … [Read more...]

A. D. Winans: 11 Photographs

A.D. Winans

House Cat, Abandoned Planet Bookstore, San Francisco, 2000

… [Read more...]

Pete Brown, Legendary Poet and Cream Lyricist, Interviewed by Bill Ectric

Bill Ectric

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 … [Read more...]

Chorus of Poets Gather for Allen Ginsberg “Howl” Celebration (2005)

Teresa Conboy

Allen Ginsberg HOWL

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 … [Read more...]

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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.

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