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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...]

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...]

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...]

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...]

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...]

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 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 release — I Am the Revolutionary: Young Jack Kerouac by Paul Maher Jr.

Empty Mirror News

I Am the Revolutionary: Young Jack Kerouac

Paul Maher Jr.'s new Kerouac biography, I Am the Revolutionary: Young Jack Kerouac, takes the reader from Kerouac's childhood years in Lowell, Massachusetts through his World War II years in New York … [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...]

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...]

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...]

This is IT: Van Gogh and Kerouac

Paul Maher Jr.

Kerouac and Van Gogh -- Paul Maher Jr.

"Dat is Het." In Vincent van Gogh’s Dutch tongue, he extolled this triumphant realization, “Dat is Het!” It lay the foundation for a rich flood of work. He was twenty-four years old. The years … [Read more...]

The sardonic pilgrimage of Jack Kerouac

Yannis Livadas

Kerouac books - French

The works of Jack Kerouac constitute a rich branch of the American literary tradition, which -- through the craftiness of such important writers, like Kerouac himself -- managed to escape the swamp of … [Read more...]

A Few Far-Flung Fragments of Forgotten Kerouaciana

Gregory Stephenson

Far-Flung Fragments of Forgotten Kerouaciana

There are still a few odd jottings and stray scribbles from the pen of Jack Kerouac – elusive bits and bobs published during the author’s lifetime – that remain unrecorded in bibliographies and/or … [Read more...]

Neal and Carolyn Cassady’s house at 29 Russell St., San Francisco

Josh Medsker

29 Russell St., 1999, by Joshua Medsker

It’s been about ten years now since I saw Beat legends Neal and Carolyn Cassady’s house. It was such a thrill for me; I can remember it perfectly. My old friends Kirstin and Colin, from Alaska had … [Read more...]

For Beat’s Sake: An Interview with Carolyn Cassady

Jon Alan Carroll

an interview with Carolyn Cassady

We all live inside history, and Carolyn Cassady has seen her share. Ms. Cassady was gracious and open when she sat for an interview at her home in Monte Sereno, not far from Los Gatos. Carolyn … [Read more...]

October Ghost

Ashley Shelby

JK - Jack Kerouac typewriter

The smudged days of October—when my mood is hand in hand with the weather—remind me of Jack Kerouac. He died in October, on the 21st, and the anniversary of that day always comes and goes like a local … [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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