Tuesday, November 2 - the beats

beats

• Robert Creeley on the sentence

  Jack

  in revery, during a performance of the sort that helped later give rise to the spoken-word movement

• Clellon Holmes, "This is the Beat Generation" (1952)
• on beat journalism
• Allen Ginsberg, excerpt from "Howl" (1956)
• Allen Ginsberg, 5-minute excerpt from a 1959 recording of "Howl": MP3
• Allen Ginsberg, brief excerpt from "Howl" (babble flow): MP3
• Allen Ginsberg, excerpt from "Howl" - "who were expelled from the academies...": MP3
• birth of the beat generation: 45th anniversary of "Howl" at the Six Gallery
• A page from the typescript of Ginsberg's Howl
• David Antin on the response to Ginsberg in the cold war - namely that his writing was "anti-poetry," "unliterary"
• Allen Ginsberg and his psychiatrist
• Ginsberg, portion of a letter to John Clellon Holmes written from the "madhouse" in 1949
• Anne Waldman, biography
• Anne Waldman, "Notes for a Rally (Speech)"
• Anne Waldman, "Rogue State" (performed at the Writers House, April 15, 2003; MP3 format)
• Lawrence Ferlinghetti, "Dog"
• audio: Ferlinghetti reads "Dog"
• Lawrence Felinghetti, "Sometime During Eternity"
• Lawrence Ferlinghetti, "Baseball Canto"
• audio: Felinghetti reading his "Baseball Canto" (RealAudio)
• Ferlinghetti, "Baseball Canto" (mp3)
• Jack Kerouac, "Essentials of Spontaneous Prose", and "Belief & Technique for Modern Prose"
• Kerouac's spontaneous method, three samples from Book of Dreams and Old Angel Midnight
• Jack Kerouac, the opening paragraphs of "October in the Railroad Earth": link to text
• Jack Kerouac, audio recording of his performance of the opening paragraphs of "October in the Railroad Earth": link to audio
• Jack Kerouac, "Charlie Parker Looked Like Buddha" (performed on the Steve Allen Show)
• Kerouac, example of his babble flow (sound writing)
• Jack Kerouac, excerpt from On the Road
• Robert Creeley, "I Know a Man" [text] [mp3 audio]
• Listen to a 25-minute PoemTalk discussion (mp3) of Creeley's "I Know a Man"
• Herbert Gold's review of Kerouac and commentary on the beatnik "movement" (1957)
• video: Amiri Baraka, "Class Struggle in Music II" (RealVideo)
• audio: Amiri Baraka, "Class Struggle in Music II" (mp3)
• William Burroughs, "The cut up method" (1963)
• Burroughs and Gysin cut-ups: "Open Letter to Life Magazine" from Minutes to Go
  spoken word
  
• Maggie Estep, short bio
• spoken word poetry
• MTV's "Spoken Word" reviewed by Caryn James in the New York Times
• Maggie Estep, "Sex Goddess of the Western Hemisphere"
• video: Maggie Estep performing "That Stupid Jerk I'm Obsessed with"
• audio: Maggie Estep, "That Stupid Jerk I'm Obsessed with" (mp3)
• Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe
• Edwin Torres, "All Colors Not White"
• Torres, "A Wutherance of E"
• Edwin Torres bio
• Edwin Torres in performance, December 11, 1999, at the Kelly Writers House
• Gil Scott-Heron, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" [YouTube video]
  supplemental/optional readings:
• Clark Coolidge on Kerouac's sound writing
• Elise Cowen, biography and two poems (from Women of the Beat Generation)
• Kerouac wore khakis - Gap ad
• Gary Snyder - basic materials for the counterculture
• Jack Kerouac - more audio files
• Gregory Corso, "Bomb"
• Gregory Corso, "The Mad Yak"
• Allen Ginsberg's FBI file summarized by Herbert Mitgang in Dangerous Dossiers (1988)
• "beat chick" interviewed