tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post3486383841049808505..comments2024-02-11T12:24:26.294-08:00Comments on The Compass Rose: What We Mean by Beat Writers - A Finite DefinitionCurtis Favillehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comBlogger50125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-88006426509081289622010-01-14T14:18:21.470-08:002010-01-14T14:18:21.470-08:00Kirby,
What I'm getting at will probably make...Kirby,<br /><br />What I'm getting at will probably make more sense to you if you try to go about it by exclusion: Which works are absolutely crucial to the origination of the Beat consciousness--not to a second- or third-hand or a later "version" of form and event, but FIRST. <br /><br />Ginsberg, for instance, writes and publishes Howl and Kaddish and Empty Mirror by 1961. Burroughs publishes Junky and Naked Lunch by 1958. Kerouac writes and publishes On the Road, The Subterraneans, The Dharma Bums, Doctor Sax, Maggie Cassidy, Mexico City Blues, Tristessa, Visions of Cody, Lonesome Traveler, and Big Sur by 1962. <br /><br />Other works written and published by the Beats during this period (1948-1962) are either inspired by Kerouac's example, or both share his viewpoint and reflect direct social contact with Kerouac, Ginsberg, or Burroughs. Kerouac is the key figure, whose vision of a foot-loose, visionary, inspired, existence is the model which connects them all. No one who arrives on the scene AFTER 1962, or who failed to participate during that key period 48-62 really has any claim to inclusion. <br /><br />Beat literature, as a style, or an influence, continued to drive the inspiration of many other writers, but this was a second layer, a subsequent event. It was, after all, a province of youth. Kerouac soon gave up the traveling and settled down to drink beer and watch TV. Many of its participants went on to have full careers (Snyder is still living, for instance, and still publishing poems and essays, in pretty much the same vein as at his beginning), but this doesn't mean the movement lived on. They just outlived it. <br /><br />Beat isn't something you can pick up like a suit of clothes and wear it. It's born, lives and dies, and is followed by later trends and developments. The age of the Beatnik came and went. It lived briefly--and passed into history. In one sense, it was all a myth, created out of Kerouac's imagination and sources. He was "on the road" hitching the rails, boppin' into San Francisco to check out the scene and soak up some energy. Cool, man. <br /><br />You meet these young kids from time to time--"man, dig that Kerouac, those were the days, eh? So romantic, livin' on the edge, gettin' high, lovin' and jivin' and makin' the scene." <br /><br />In any event, Kirby, you make up your own version of Beat and put it up on your blog. I'm sure we can all have a fine debate about it there. I think we've worn out this one.Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-18494524255356046552010-01-14T13:41:13.331-08:002010-01-14T13:41:13.331-08:00You probably won't print this, but here's ...You probably won't print this, but here's another snippet, <br /><br />"I see Christ a skeleton on the cross.<br />If the church falls and stone does fall,<br />If Church-idea is forgotten and ideas are forgotten,<br />I know within my soul that Christ will always be.<br />Nothing can erase that wonder of man;<br />Not bomb nor anti-christ nor thought nor me.<br />Christ is the victory of man<br />And so made your life, Francis, and most our history --"<br /><br />p. 37<br /><br />You just have to actually read the text instead of depending on the hearsay of your illiterate brethren who think that Ginsberg said it all, and everyone else was a mere echo. Not at all true, and enormously lazy to boot.<br /><br />Plus, you're missing out on the loveliest verses of the Beat movement, which has its naked feet walking in the waters of the Jordan.<br /><br />That's why it was so appealing to American youth, and to the hippie movement, which also looked back to Jesus.Kirby Olsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05952289700191142943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-33458425593909725292010-01-14T13:34:25.605-08:002010-01-14T13:34:25.605-08:00Curtis, your notion that this movement erupts out ...Curtis, your notion that this movement erupts out of nowhere, lasts a decade or less, and then disappears, is complete nonsense.<br /><br />It couldn't possibly make sense even if it did because it doesn't.<br /><br />One has to think in much longer cycles, and plus you have to actually read the work you're writing about.<br /><br />And try to look up what other people are saying, too. Read just for instance the Wikipedia article called The Beat Movement.<br /><br />You are a little too obscure to try to completely redraw the lines around this movement. But it's amazing that you attempt to do so, and attempt to circumscribe the movement and these writers in this way. I don't know what your agenda is, but it's blindingly short-sighted.<br /><br />St. Francis was in fact a major saint for these writers. Just try to see it, and you will see it. Start by rereading the poem called St. Francis in Long Live Man by Corso,<br /><br />And don't put words in my mouth in order to turn me into a straw man. I never said they were followers of an organized religion. I just said that they were inspired by St. Francis, and that a big part of this was inspired by the city they happened to be in. <br /><br />FRANCIS & THE BIRDS<br /><br />I praise you your love,<br />Your benediction of animals and men,<br />When the night-horn blew,<br />And the world's property was disproportioned,<br />Where ere the winged children,<br />The rabbit,<br />The afterglow --<br />Good human tree, birds come to rest;<br />Not only those which chirp<br />But also those that honk and caw;<br />I see you with eagle,<br />Penguin, vulture, seagull,<br />Nor be it a bird<br />But an elephant, a herd!<br />All on your goodly compassionate shoulders.<br /><br />(poem continues for several pages, pp. 36-40, Long Live Man, by G. Corso.)Kirby Olsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05952289700191142943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-8835884698238561602010-01-14T11:29:10.860-08:002010-01-14T11:29:10.860-08:00Kirby, for you the mere mention of a name conjures...Kirby, for you the mere mention of a name conjures up complex back-channels and tangents of reference, completely out of context and with no discernible validity. <br /><br />Thanks for mentioning Everson, though. He wasn't a Beat, but a severely conflicted religionist who mistook his early guilt and rebelliousness for sin, and entered a Catholic monastery in 1951, only to exit, with some fanfare, at the end of the decade to marry (a much younger woman) and resume his secular, profane career as a poet, printer and public literary figure. But it isn't his choice of a religious path in middle-age that defines, or excludes him from Beat identity. He had nothing to do with Kerouac, or Ginsberg or Burroughs. He never wrote verse that could be described as Beat. <br /><br />Everson was, like my real father John Calef, a conscientious objector during WWII; spent years in detention camps in Oregon, where he began to print his own work (and that of others) under the Untide Press imprimatur. An admirer--indeed, almost a disciple and follower--of Robinson Jeffers, about whom he also wrote at length; he wrote a lot of verse, both sacred and profane. <br /><br />But Everson was no Beat. This is a perfect example of the kind of mis-nomenclature I've been addressing. Everson was of an earlier generation. He was 40 in 1952 and had chosen a monk's path for that whole crucial decade. <br /><br />The Beats were not followers of organized religion, and it makes no sense to attempt to describe them in terms of religious doctrine. <br /><br />Sorry, Kirby, nice try.Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-32801991700701446022010-01-14T11:26:36.309-08:002010-01-14T11:26:36.309-08:00Sir F-vaille you don't describe a literary mov...Sir F-vaille you don't describe a literary movement so much as a little group of cronies, mostly from Columbia: the narrow sense of "Beat" was. What did Paul Bowles say of them? Escapees from mental institutions or something. At the same time in McCarthyville, there were others writing subversive lit., even what we may call "beat lit", though not necessarily of the Kerouac, Ginzo sort. Ferlinghetti seems to suggest as much (and jazz an influence as well). <br /><br />What about Neal Cassady? No NYer, but Denver rogue, yet sort of a writer. Kesey was writing in early 60s. As was HS Thompson, or Terry Southern. A Thompson or Terry Southern wasn't one of the cronies (but TS did live in Paris with some of 'em for a time), but is called a beat, usually, at least by the academics who specialize in such trivial matters. <br /><br />Really, the term Beat though probably started by Kerouac later does become a marketing term. Eh Beat lit, yeah man on Aisle 8 ( city Lights would surely not have survived by chapped-book sales). Really, that Chron-hack Caen probably helped too with his "beatnik", inaccurate or not.Jhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11567400697675996283noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-25012957027799242922010-01-14T10:13:13.158-08:002010-01-14T10:13:13.158-08:00Kerouac who coined the term linked it to Beatitude...Kerouac who coined the term linked it to Beatitudes and Beatific, which links it to the Catholic Church. So it's as old as the Catholic Church, and is an attitude that will presumably last until the last Catholic goes home to God.<br /><br />A huge part of the SF Renaissance was Saint Francis.<br /><br />SF -- IS Saint Francisco.<br /><br />SAN FRANCISCO.<br /><br />Ferlinghetti, Kerouac, Corso and many others linked themselves quite explicitly to Saint Francis.<br /><br />Saint Francis was around when? I forget the dates -- late medieval era. To hazard a guess -- 1260.<br /><br />Corso's beautiful early poems to Saint Francis are very important.<br /><br />There is, again, nothing like this in Ginsberg's work.<br /><br />There was a Christian monk named Brother Everson or a name like that actually in the movement. It was a kind of splinter off the Catholic church much like that of Saint Francis himself was (he was declared at times, along with his group of mendicant friars -- an outlaw).<br /><br />Some Pope included them again.<br /><br />You get adumbrations of this in Eco's Name of the Rose.<br /><br />Without the religious context to which the original name as defined by Kerouac refers -- you can't make any sense of the group.<br /><br />Aside from Ginsberg they were not primarily socialisticalalitarianesque.<br /><br />They saw Jesus as the avatar, and saw themselves aligned with Saint Francis, in the city of SAN FRANCISCO.<br /><br />Bukowski was in Los Angeles -- which had a harder and meaner perspective. I've read a few of his books. Women, I think, was one. He has a long sentence in there about a prostitute popping his zits.<br /><br />All the Beats were interested in religious topics. Many of them chased after foreign gods -- Ginsberg, Snyder, and Whalen in particular.<br /><br />I don't know if McClure did that.<br /><br />It's hard to know where slightly later writers like Brautigan fit into the religious aspect. Brautigan was clearly a Luddite of sorts (esp. in Watermelon Sugar), and that may have come out of a Franciscan weltgeist. Brautigan did grow up reading the bible, and his daughter claims him for Christ in her wonderful memoir You Can't Catch Death, but the case she makes is tangential and relies on the unreliable evidence of Brautigan's mother (her grandmother).<br /><br />New York School was Jewish to some extent, and to a large extent -- lapsed. None of them had any particular spiritual ambitions.<br /><br />O'Hara, however, did inhabit to some extent a Catholic universe as a young man, and this still comes through in his poems. (St. Paul and All That, for instance.)Kirby Olsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05952289700191142943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-78393592319432709102010-01-14T07:12:16.529-08:002010-01-14T07:12:16.529-08:00"it" all comes outof/from a Jass Beat
..."it" all comes outof/from a Jass Beat <br /><br />you<br />say<br /><br />Monk, Coleman, <br />Dizzy, etc etc<br /><br />then snap your<br />fingers/mind to<br />the sinkOhPation<br /><br />of those Harlem (street) Rhythms...<br /><br />every thing (Beat-wise) begins/began in jazz-clubs and the sounds in the streets in The City where the "real" "poetry" is..<br /><br />but:<br /><br />I could be wrong.Ed Bakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11285310130024785775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-70082523758895303692010-01-14T06:54:22.403-08:002010-01-14T06:54:22.403-08:00Dear Doug:
As one interested in literature, the c...Dear Doug:<br /><br />As one interested in literature, the criticism of literature, and the marketplace for the material text, definitions of literary identity, influence and association are important to me.<br /><br />A great deal has been discussed with respect to the meaning and appropriation of words; "Beat" has been casually and flagrantly tossed around, and applied to dozens of writers and social and cultural phenomena. One could make an argument for extending the term to include writers or artists who had nothing to do with the origination and definition of the term, but my point is that it would be useful to narrow the definition to apply to those who actually established the first, specific meanings, and wrote the works which demonstrated its principles--rather than to anyone who came later. Charles Bukowski had nothing whatever to do with the Beat phenomenon, even though he coincidentally shared some circumstances and attitudes of theirs. He might as well have lived in Brazil or South Africa. Anne Waldman started out in New York, and her first works have nothing to do with Beat Literature as such; her associations with Kerouac and others at Naropa don't make her a Beat Writer--she was simply too young to participate, having been born in 1945, at or near the beginning of the movement.<br /><br />You can use the adjective "Beat" in many different ways, applying it to anything you choose, but from a strict literary sense, it should be confined to the writers and period (and works) I cited. McClure's Hymns to St. Geryon is a Beat document. Later, McClure participated in the Psychedelic or Flower Generation, but his Beat works were written in the late 1950's and early Sixties. Had McClure not participated in The Six reading, or not published the early poems he did, he'd belong only to movements in the 1960's (and later). It's possible to have belonged, obviously, to the Beat movement, but to have moved on--as all who survived it did. <br /><br />Beat "ideas" which you mention above, had a life of their own. Its principles entered the mainstream, or were perpetuated in other ways. But that doesn't change my premise. Beat identity s/b confined to the 1948-1962 period, and to those who were genuine contributors and participants--not to others.Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-11238678713619434752010-01-13T20:06:19.839-08:002010-01-13T20:06:19.839-08:00Hello Mr. Faville,
Beat - beyond style of writing...Hello Mr. Faville,<br /><br />Beat - beyond style of writing also gave us an idea of anti-consumerism. Ferlinghetti still talks today about 'auto-geddon' - the destruction of civic spaces and the environment through the auto industry and the glamorization of vehicles. <br /><br />Also, and I can't recall the source, there was an existential idea of Beat, meaning because of the military-industrial complex and nuclear weapons, previous socialist ideals as held by the likes of say, Rexroth, were no longer going to be expected to succeed; forms of resistance were being flattened by the oppressive conformity of the 50s. We were all 'beat' in other words.Doughttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03127984623890722872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-44176720901332311112010-01-12T12:50:03.086-08:002010-01-12T12:50:03.086-08:00I haven't read Lamantia's work, and have n...I haven't read Lamantia's work, and have no reason to defend him, Curtis.<br /><br />But I don't think you should just make things up about him.<br /><br />I also don't think you should rely on hearsay wrt Corso's having been a poor man's Ginsberg. Corso's work at its best simply leaves everything Ginsberg wrote in the dust.<br /><br />The poem Marriage with which you are no doubt familiar. Does this strike as IN ANY WAY resembling any of Ginsberg's productions?<br /><br />There are poems even in the last books that completely outrank Gsinberg's increasingly dismal productions, and his sad singalongs for Nambla in Death & Fame.<br /><br />You are now using Beat as a framework with which to beat down anyone who isn't Ginsberg.<br /><br />Enlarge your boundaries!<br /><br />Steve -- I didn't know anything much about Lamantia. I've read a few of the pieces and thought they were lamentable. <br /><br />I didn't know how Catholicism rose and fell in his work. I found that in the Wikipedia article I looked up this afternoon.<br /><br />All I knew is that he was married to Nancy Peters, and of course the famous Breton quote.<br /><br />I consider the Cantos to be an enormous disaster from beginning to end at least in terms of intellection if that's a word.<br /><br />Usury is not as bad as it sounds, and it should be defended. People need credit, and credit should be extended to get seed money out there. And anyone who takes the risk of lending seed money should expect a return on the investment.<br /><br />Pound's clubbing of this one idea over and over defies common market sense.<br /><br />Capitalism is always good if it remains within the laws and doesn't sell shoddy or illegal goods like drugs.<br /><br />Hurray for capitalism! Hurray for America! Hurray for poetry!Kirby Olsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05952289700191142943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-70104931053717046932010-01-12T11:46:49.457-08:002010-01-12T11:46:49.457-08:00Okay, Steven, if you know this for a fact, then I&...Okay, Steven, if you know this for a fact, then I'll rely on that. <br /><br />Also, I never said Lamantia's work was all anything. He began as a doctrinaire surrealist (gosh, who wasn't doctrinaire in that way?!!), and the work I read over the years sounded pretty much like it always had, but I didn't read him closely, checking references etc. <br /><br />I never had much of a taste for work such as his. <br /><br />Translating Reverdy kind of put me off the whole pure surrealist thing. Rexroth translated some, and it's pretty dull stuff. Ditto with Breton. Ashbery and Watten are better at surrealism than almost anyone else I know.Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-29849462050192748862010-01-12T11:41:35.956-08:002010-01-12T11:41:35.956-08:00Kirb:
Corso was a Beat. That's really the on...Kirb:<br /><br />Corso was a Beat. That's really the only reason for mentioning him in this post. Maybe we can talk about him someday, but his work really doesn't interest me much. As far back as I can remember, people have always described him as a hanger-on, a "poor man's Ginsberg" and I never saw any reason to challenge that. <br /><br />Rather than speculating, which is what we're doing, I'd prefer to rely on someone who knew what Lamantia's persuasion really was. I thought that was a well-known fact about him (until I saw the Peters connection), but I'm not infallible. I get the feeling that you want to defend him for becoming religious toward the end of his life, as if that alone were reason enough to privilege his life and work. From my perspective, that's just dumb.Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-13228373392367477352010-01-12T11:39:33.768-08:002010-01-12T11:39:33.768-08:00Lamantia was married more than once. I think it wa...<br>Lamantia was married more than once. I think it was three times. That he was, for example, hired as a teenager to be an Associate editor of <i>View</i> by Parker Tyler and Charles Henri Ford (both gay), and was friends with or corresponded to a degree with both in the years / decades that follow, doesn't make him "gay."<br /><br />Lamantia's religion also should be carefully considered. He was deeply into Catholicism, in his own way, mind you, in the mid to late 1950s, and then again in the late 1990s / early 2000s. But before and in between, he was virulently anti-Catholic Church (including in print). Philip waxed and waned about certain other things too, such as the whether Kenneth Rexroth was a beneficial or baneful influence.<br /><br />With regard to the poetry, which is where the focus must be: his 1940s surrealism might be pigeon-holed as doctrinaire (since it involved large measures of automatic writing), but it has the incredible energy and freshness of youth (he was 15-18 years old when he wrote the two or three dozen poems that define his early period) that gives it a staying power unlike anything else written byh an American (at least at that time. It holds its own with what the other French speaking surrealists (<a href="http://stevenfama.blogspot.com/2010/01/extra-extra.html" rel="nofollow">including Cesaire</a>) wrote during the 1940s. As Andre Breton said about Lamantia at the time: "a voice that rises once in a 100 years" (or whatever the exact quotation is). <br /><br />Finally, there's no way anyone could seriously suggest that Lamantia's "late" poetry -- <i>Becoming Visible</i> (1981) and <i>Meadowlark West</i> (1986) are doctrinaire surrealist. The latter book is especially out there in many different ways. <br /><br />Garrett Caples, an extremely thorough and careful reader of Lamantia (he edited Lamantia's mid-1950s manuscript <i>Tau</i> when it was published in 2008 by City Lights), has suggested that the allusions in <i>Meadowlark West</i> are as dense (and as obscure sometimes) as Pound's <i>Cantos</i>. Surrealism truly is but one element of that book, as Lamantia himself explained (in interviews) more than once.Steven Famahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13733977161680651117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-60244782418744035142010-01-12T11:33:04.167-08:002010-01-12T11:33:04.167-08:00I don't know if it was a marriage of convenien...I don't know if it was a marriage of convenience, but why would he need a marriage of convenience? Is there ANY evidence in the poems of homosexuality?<br /><br />Did you just make this up for some reason? I don't live in SF so maybe you have heard something I haven't.<br /><br />He was not openly homosexual to my knowledge, and in SF that would have been a plus for his social standing, would it not?<br /><br />But back to another topic: you claim that Corso is a minor Ginsberg, or a watered-down Ginsberg. Could you present one of Corso's poems, and show how it is derivative of Ginsberg in some way?<br /><br />Just a small request.<br /><br />You have a quite unique thesis on this point, and it's one I'd like you to back up with evidence of some kind. So curious!<br /><br />I've never seen any link between the two. To me, Corso is by far the greater poet. I think that even Ginsberg saw that.Kirby Olsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05952289700191142943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-31020886581671718882010-01-12T11:05:34.086-08:002010-01-12T11:05:34.086-08:00Might the marriage have been one "of convenie...Might the marriage have been one "of convenience"?<br /><br />How old was Nancy Peters? <br /><br />They didn't marry until he was 51. I think Lamantia had an earlier life, which he repudiated later, becoming a Catholic and "gettin' religion" in other senses.<br /><br />I remain unconvinced, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-21506971856069511272010-01-12T10:53:30.779-08:002010-01-12T10:53:30.779-08:00Lamantia was a Catholic who came from Italy, and a...Lamantia was a Catholic who came from Italy, and also married to Nancy Peters. So he's not gay. Nancy Peters is an editor at City Lights books. He was a Beat, and also a surrealist (he met Breton in his teens when Breton was in the US during WWII).<br /><br />This is from the Wikipedia article:<br /><br />Nancy Peters, his wife and literary editor, quoted about him, "He found in the narcotic night world a kind of modern counterpart to the gothic castle -- a zone of peril to be symbolically or existentially crossed."<br /><br />The poet spent time with native peoples in the United States and Mexico in the 1950s, participating in the peyote-eating rituals of the Washo Indians of Nevada. In later life, he embraced Catholicism, the religion of his childhood, and wrote many poems on Catholic themes.Kirby Olsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05952289700191142943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-48147866408422940422010-01-12T10:39:29.397-08:002010-01-12T10:39:29.397-08:00Steven:
Lamantia was a precocious surrealist, bef...Steven:<br /><br />Lamantia was a precocious surrealist, before the Beat phenomenon really got going. But his career is in many ways parallel. He was interested in drugs, and the visionary window(s) that could open for him. He was not interested in any academic traditions, and was free to explore the Unconscious without preconditions or preconceptions (though I would argue his surrealist methodology tended to be somewhat doctrinaire). Temperamentally, he strikes me as having these aspects in common with Burroughs. I believe Lamantia was also Gay, which he of course shared with Ginsberg and Burroughs. In addition, Lamantia was published by Auerhahn, City Lights and Oyez, which lends further legitimacy to his claim for inclusion. <br /><br />It becomes more difficult to say, along similar grounds, why Spicer might not qualify. But his preoccupations were somewhat different. He was interested in language, and dialectics, in a way that is more like Duncan. Also, he was not a joiner, being too strong a personality in his own right, to submit to anyone else's program. I don't see his work at any point to be related in theme or style to Kerouac, Ginsberg or Burroughs. <br /><br />Maybe Spicer and Duncan belong together as important figures of the San Francisco Renaissance, together with Rexroth, Snyder, Whalen, Welch, Blaser, Kaufman, Hirschman, Ferlinghetti, Wieners and so forth. Members of that group are also Beats, of course.Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-1927193789614172182010-01-11T18:13:22.145-08:002010-01-11T18:13:22.145-08:00Poet I'm not yet it's pretty obvious that ...Poet I'm not yet it's pretty obvious that Corso was no orthodox catolico or rightist, and had a certain anarchistic edge (ie, BOMB). He idolized Shelley, even wanted to be buried next to him in the ....prot. graveyard in Roma; his verse has a bit more structure than the Whitman-izers, or haiku types, even metrical at times . Though probably a symboliste influence as well (overlooked by most of the haiku hack school). Lamantia had that as well as far as looking at the few thangs online (not exactly a topseller at Barnes n Noble), with the real surrealist influence as well. <br /><br />Corso was quite capable of real nasty obscenity, however (he was censored on air at KPFK ah believe..right in middle of broadblast--like delay of 10 seconds, for Corsolike emergencies). Corso may have not been down with Mao, but NO sunday schooler, at all, in form or content, and he did smell bad and wore bad clothes, as did many of them (including Micheline---a beat, really, regardless of what Sir F-ville claims). So K-o's full of merde, as per usual.Jhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11567400697675996283noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-80098280325244133352010-01-11T17:38:39.328-08:002010-01-11T17:38:39.328-08:00Kirb:
I read Gasoline and The Happy Birthday of D...Kirb:<br /><br />I read Gasoline and The Happy Birthday of Death.<br /><br />He's like watered-down Ginsberg--I mean style-wise. <br /><br />How important is content to the Beat beat? <br /><br />Ginsberg wanted to revive the long Whitmanic line, the rumbling, chanting, propulsive force of American energy. Corso probably didn't have that clearly in mind.Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-10398851105154318522010-01-11T17:16:56.555-08:002010-01-11T17:16:56.555-08:00Curtis, although Ginsberg was self-consciously act...Curtis, although Ginsberg was self-consciously activist about his issues in the 50s straight into the 90s -- yammering on the gay issues -- for instance -- Corso never did anything like that, or very rarely did anything like that. He's more of a thinker for the sake of thinking in his better poems. Humor for the sake of humor. Poetry for the sake of poetry. <br /><br />I get the sense that you've never read him.<br /><br />I think even Ferlinghetti and McClure had issues in their writing. Not that that's bad, but with Corso if you were to abstract an issue out of a poem you wouldn't have the poem at all, you'd just have a kind of nothing. For Corso, the poem is in the poem, not in its message. To that extent he's a lot more like O'Hara, who lived into his forties, and got very good work done...<br /><br />I think you have to be very careful thinking about whether that group was entirely issues-driven. Are you possibly generalizing from Ginsberg, who does in fact define the group to a degree?<br /><br />Kerouac is important but he's different. He's a patriot. That's central, and is quite different from Ginsberg. Ginsberg was a pinhead. He didn't understand America's greatness. He was far more provincial in his thinking, and he got these awful things going with Buddhist dictators.<br /><br />Corso wasn't.<br /><br />there are people hanging around who smell bad and wear rotten clothes who caricature the movement, I guess, but they're not poets.<br /><br />Oh, yes, there's a third and fourth generatino of NY School.<br /><br />I could write about it later.Kirby Olsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05952289700191142943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-30605443684901277212010-01-11T17:12:32.309-08:002010-01-11T17:12:32.309-08:00hey Curtis
I didn't have a point
as
even
my...hey Curtis<br /><br />I didn't have a point<br /><br />as<br /><br />even<br />my <br />points<br />are<br /><br />pointless<br /><br />not sure when any of these poets/people began calling themselves "Beats" maybe when Wall Street/Maduison Ave started paying 'em?<br /><br />as for my list<br /><br />well,<br /><br />all of these poets were <br />Hotsie-Totsies<br /><br />I like/appreciate their work more than the boyzes'<br /><br />and the fuzzy sweaters!Ed Bakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11285310130024785775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-87597695840451762522010-01-11T16:59:01.656-08:002010-01-11T16:59:01.656-08:00I'm unclear on the concept, here, Ed.
Are all...I'm unclear on the concept, here, Ed.<br /><br />Are all these ladies to be considered Beats, or just the feminine inspiration for Beat consciousness?Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-74768473883667640302010-01-11T16:37:23.498-08:002010-01-11T16:37:23.498-08:00Kyger, easy
one of The Girls!
you want a list?!!...Kyger, easy<br /><br />one of The Girls!<br /><br />you want a list?!!1<br /><br />Maddie Gleason; Joan Vollmer: Mary Fabelli: <br />Diane di Prima; Elsise Cowen; Joyce Johnson; Hwettie Jones; Msw Mclure;<br />Denise Levertov; Janine; <br /><br />Lenore Kandel... etc<br /><br /><br />Anne Waldman...<br /><br /><br />hey these (and many more) where The Muses" and did a little writing on the sly!<br /><br />there is also Barbra Moraff, Carol Berge, Rochelle Owens, Diane<br />Wakoski<br /><br />heck,<br /><br />I could go on, however,<br /><br />I am getting aroused just watching my thinking coming and going...Ed Bakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11285310130024785775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-67864491634637873052010-01-11T16:31:23.873-08:002010-01-11T16:31:23.873-08:00Kirby, the point you raise is a serious one, which...Kirby, the point you raise is a serious one, which I need to address.<br /><br />Why aren't there "later generation" Beat poets?<br /><br />I think because the Beat movement was quite specific in its outlines, and core principles. The first New York School was mostly about opportunity and access--O'Hara and Koch and Ashbery and Schuyler were all New Yorker City residents who'd come from other places (as many of the most famous dwellers of NYC often are). That was repeated by Berrigan and Padgett and company, 10-15 years later--out-of-towners who came looking for a "scene" etc. Berkson is kind of a "connector"--having been an intimate of O'Hara and heavily influenced by Koch (his teacher), who was so young that he didn't begin to produce his best work until the 1970's and after. Is there a Third Generation NY School? <br /><br />I think it's demonstrable that there was no Second Generation of Beat because it was a unique occurrence--determined by specific cultural factors of a fixed time. Some of the same factors that saw the "thaw" among academic writers of the 1950's (Lowell, Shapiro, Simpson, Wright, et al) going into the Sixties. You couldn't have had a "second" Beat movement, because society had changed in the Sixties, accommodating many of the rebellious urges and reactions of the post-War period. There were different issues, different barriers, different challenges. The New York School wasn't about living a different life, or rejecting structural inconsistencies in society: It was about making new kinds of art. It wasn't political. It wasn't polemical. As Ashbery and Koch and Schuyler matured (O'Hara died too young), they became more predictable and traditional. Each of those four writers had "made their case" prior to 1960, just as the Beat had, but they went on to round out their careers.<br /><br />It's kind of sad, now, to see how later "Beats" tried to sing the same tired old diatribes against society--it looked and sounded outdated, and it was.Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-30690661676409508602010-01-11T16:12:00.975-08:002010-01-11T16:12:00.975-08:00"disses Kerouac"?
Naw. I just have tro..."disses Kerouac"?<br /><br />Naw. I just have trouble appreciating him. Probably my background of stylistic prose--I was reading serious lit and poli sci as early as age 10, so Kerouac's sightly mealy-mouthed muzziness never seemed sophisticated enough. But of course sophistication isn't at all what it's about. <br /><br />Kerouac's enormously important, no doubt about it. No disrespect intended.Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.com