The Beat Generation lives on. At least for a couple hours anyway next week at the UAG Gallery when R.M. Engelhardt will be hosting a special Bet Generation night at the Saint Poem Reading Series. This event is always a good time, reading the poets who introduced many of us to poetry and spoken word. Bring your favorite Ginsberg, Kerouac, or Burroughs work, or even your own, and step up to mic.
BEAT GENERATION NIGHT AT THE SAINT POEM READING SERIES~OPEN MIC
Monday, March 19th @ The Upstate Artists Guild, 247 Lark Street, Albany, NY…and everything is going to the beat – It’s the beat generation, it be-at, it’s the beat to keep, it’s the beat of the heart, it’s being beat and down in the world and like oldtime lowdown and like in ancient civilizations the slave boatmen rowing galleys to a beat and …servants spinning pottery to a beat…GET BEAT!
7:30pm Sign Up~8pm Start
Hosted By Poet R.M. Engelhardt
__________________
The so-called Beat Generation was a whole bunch of people, of all different nationalities, who came to the conclusion that society sucked. — Amiri Baraka
But yet, but yet, woe, woe unto those who think that the Beat Generation means crime, delinquency, immorality, amorality … woe unto those who attack it on the grounds that they simply don’t understand history and the yearning of human souls … woe in fact unto those who those who make evil movies about the Beat Generation where innocent housewives are raped by beatniks! … woe unto those who spit on the Beat Generation, the wind’ll blow it back. — Jack Kerouac
Three writers does not a generation make. — Gregory Corso
Nobody knows whether we were catalysts or invented something, or just the froth riding on a wave of its own. We were all three, I suppose. — Allen Ginsberg
The term ‘beat generation’ was introduced by Jack Kerouac sometime around 1948 to describe his social circle.
The Beat Generation, also known as the beat movement, were a group of American writers who emerged in the 1950s. Among its most influential members were Gary Snyder, the radical poet Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac.
Jack Kerouac was the acknowledged leader and spokesman for the Beat Generation. What could be loosely described as the underlying philosophy was visionary enlightenment, Zen Buddhism, Amerindian culture. The Beat Generation were centred around the artist colonies of North Beach (San Francisco), Venice West (Los Angeles) and Greenwich Village (New York City). The Beat Generation rejected the prevailing academic attitude to poetry, feeling that poetry should be brought to the people. Readings would take place in the Coexistence Bagel Shop andLawrence Ferlinghetti‘s City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, often to the accompaniment of Jazz. A common theme that linked them all together was a rejection of the prevailing American middle-class values, the purposelessness of modern society and the need for withdrawal and protest.
The major Beat writings include Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Allen Ginsberg’sHowl, and William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch. Both Howl and Naked Lunch became the focus of obscenity trials in the United States that helped to liberalize what could be legally published.
Come Out & Join Us & GET BEAT!
Read From Your Favorite Beat Authors,
Live it, Dress It, Be It!
And remember that next month is the very special Word Fest edition of Saint Poem with a tribute to the life and work of EE Cummings.
Comments are closed.