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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...]

Beat Generation photographer Larry Keenan’s website relaunched

Denise Enck

Larry Keenan Beat Generation photo gallery

In 2002, Beat and counterculture photographer Larry Keenan asked me to build a website to document forty years of his Beat Generation and counterculture photography. Working with him and learning … [Read more...]

Beatnik: Collages by Rebeka Elizegi

Rebeka Elizegi

BEATNIK 4 (detail) - Rebeka Elizegi collage

The series focuses on the Beat Generation as a cultural phenomenon, more specifically in the women poets who participated in the movement and who historically have had less visibility than their male … [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...]

Richard’s Coat: Remembering Richard Irwin

Rebecca LaFontaine-Larivee

Rebecca LaFontaine-Larivee - Richard's Coat: Remembering Richard Irwin

Richard’s Coat… went into the cardboard box with all the other things for the thrift store: an orange radio with a broken antenna, a vintage purse that was only in fashion in San Francisco’s … [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...]

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...]

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...]

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...]

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...]

Anything Can Happen: Bruno Sourdin in conversation with Gary Cummiskey

Gary Cummiskey

Bruno Sourdin interview with Gary Cummiskey

Bruno Sourdin is a French poet and collagist. He was born in 1950 in the Mont-Saint-Michel area. After studying journalism in Paris, he travelled in Morocco, Egypt, and India. He now lives in … [Read more...]

BOB KAUFMAN poet of ecstatic litany by Matt Hill

Matt Hill

BOB KAUFMAN poet of ecstatic litany Bob Kaufman’s poetry of jazz echoes Bob Kaufman is a traveler of deep space Bob Kaufman is a holder of many sorrows Bob Kaufman in syncopated dream chanter … [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...]

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...]

Beatnik / Kerouac and Rock ‘n Roll: Two essays by Juan Arabia

Juan Arabia

Juan Arabia - Jack Kerouac

Beatnik The origin of "beat" is as a word of oral usage, closer to experience; in its meaning of "beat down" it suggests the being as defeated or battered down. It points toward a certain … [Read more...]

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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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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.

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