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JerryPat
Senior Member
since 2010-10-30
Posts 1991
Louisiana/America

0 posted 2011-01-14 02:21 PM


I was asked to write  sample of Beat Poetry for " those of us that missed out on the time and place." Although I didn't make it to New York until the Beat phenomena had more or less petered out, I was able to find a coffee house or two or more who still held onto the idea that Beat was the salvation of the world and got to sit in on a few inadequate beats. Gone were Kerouac and Ginsberg, Burroughs, et al.

Beat poetry came about as more or less an anti-war protest movement after World War II. Why they would pick on America for their protest is something I have no idea about. We were attacked, blah, blah, blah. Sound familiar? Anyway, some talented guys and some not so talented guys found one another and began to do their thing. It caught the imagination of the media and a thus Beat was born. I personally thought that most of the poetry was not understandable. But I promised I would try to write a Beat poem and here it is, Lori.

<><><><><><><><>

subway uptown
     grinding into oblivion
last stop before Palookaville
madness surviving
     thanks for that
     drooling with the Negro's on fifth avenue
diddy-bopping H
quoting Burroughs righteously
where meatless bodies
     underdone with pride
     two-fisted pride
     PRIDE!
taking slashed wrists
blue blood gurgling
mountains of bodies from America's bloody machine
Kerouac coined the phrase
Beat Generation
Ginsberg's Howl
the cool
the beat
spewing indecipherable poetry
angry
screeching vats of boiling oil
hysterical naked lunch
in Buddha's hideaway
     book panderer Ferlinghetti
     taking it to the masses
     ignorant masses
     about our cool hipster slide
     snapping fingers for recognition and applause
this, then is us
alcoholic death awaits young proseman Kerouac
Burroughs rode the (H)orse to Long Island
slid through the cracks
     misfits
     geniuses
     sexual oddities
     licking tears from the moldy sky
coffee houses in the Village
selling cool
being hip
     antiestablishment
     kicking down walls
swimming upstream
hipsters and cool smoked up cats
no woman beats
     not yet their time
     even the cool beats shunned the women poets
the reason simple
     they were too cool, man



Intolerant people are the people who do not believe the way we want them to, which makes us intolerant by default.—July 26, 2010

[This message has been edited by JerryPat (01-14-2011 09:22 PM).]

© Copyright 2011 Jerry Pat Bolton - All Rights Reserved
ethome
Member Patricius
since 2000-05-14
Posts 11858
New Brunswick Canada
1 posted 2011-01-14 02:33 PM


Jerry

You were kickin round the lower west side of Manhattan for a while.
Beatnickin 'The Village' Cool man!

Lots of musical talent went through there and some of it grew huge!


The Village had a cutting-edge music scene. The Village Gate, the Village Vanguard and The Blue Note (since 1981), hosted some of the biggest names in jazz on a regular basis. Greenwich Village also played a major role in the development of the folk music scene of the 1960s. Music clubs included Gerde's Folk City, The Bitter End, Cafe Au Go Go, Cafe Wha?, The Gaslight Cafe and the Bottom Line. Three of the four members of The Mamas & the Papas met there. Guitarist and folk singer Dave Van Ronk lived there for many years. Village resident and cultural icon Bob Dylan by the mid-60s became one of the foremost popular songwriters in the world, and often developments in Greenwich Village would influence the simultaneously occurring folk rock movement in San Francisco and elsewhere, and vice versa. Dozens of other cultural and popular icons got their start in the Village's nightclub, theater, and coffeehouse scene during the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s, notably besides Bob Dylan, there were Barbra Streisand, Peter, Paul, and Mary, The Lovin' Spoonful, Simon & Garfunkel, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Eric Andersen, Joan Baez, The Velvet Underground, The Kingston Trio, Richie Havens, Maria Muldaur, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, Jimi Hendrix and Nina Simone among others. The Greenwich Village of the 1950s and 1960s was at the center of Jane Jacobs's book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which defended it and similar communities, while critiquing common urban renewal policies of the time.

I bet you were in a lot of those.

Lou Reed saw your picture and he wants his shirt back!!

Eric
Well, I'm off to lick some tears from darn moldy sky that keeps following me around!
Oh, super imaginative collection of far out thoughts here man.....grin....

Love does not look after it's own interests.

Lori Grosser Rhoden
Member Patricius
since 2009-10-10
Posts 10202
Fair to middlin' of nowhere
2 posted 2011-01-14 03:17 PM


Far out my friend! Thank you for indulging me. I knew you would nail it. Where did I leave my black beret? Thank goodness for TV to give me a background setting for this.  I could smell the smoke in the room!
Lori

JerryPat
Senior Member
since 2010-10-30
Posts 1991
Louisiana/America
3 posted 2011-01-14 03:36 PM


At the time I was doing whatever it was I was doing in the Village, Eric, I was doing a lot of it at The Duplex. The leftover coffee houses I can't even recall their names, but one of them had something to do with an onion, go figure.

Since this was my first foray into the City, and since I was in the first stage of trying to commit suicide by having fun, lots and lots of fun I stayed so stoned and/or drunk I missed out on a lot of stuff. I remember Cafe Au Go Go and The Bitter End. Dylan too somewhere in the smoky, blue haze of my muddled thoughts. But I was actually impressed (at the time) by the poetry readings in the second-third rate coffee houses with the background of a sax or bongos and sometimes both. I remember sitting there wiped out nodding my head to the words and the music and thinking I was some kinda cool. I wasn't, it would take me years to get to that stage if I ever really did.

Oh, I remember Tom Paxton and The Velvet Underground too, so maybe some of the cobwebs are being shaken loose. Ah. I have to say those were some good time, and then I went to the Left Coast and helped the Hippies do their thing a few years later. I was more into that that the Beats, but the Beats co-opted some of the hippie movement and tried to make a comeback, and did to a certain extent, especially in San Francisco.

Thanks for the wild comments, man.

Intolerant people are the people who do not believe the way we want them to, which makes us intolerant by default.—July 26, 2010

JerryPat
Senior Member
since 2010-10-30
Posts 1991
Louisiana/America
4 posted 2011-01-14 03:41 PM


Hi Lori. I don't actually consider what I wrote as Beat Poetry. I just wanted to write about some of the beats, and I guess I got into the Beat language a few times. I remember reading Naked Lunch and thinking this was the ultimate in literature. It wasn't, and I realized that years later. Still, it was a book of its time and what man will do to himself when he decides he wants to stick steel rids into his veins and shoot poison into his bloodstream.

You're welcome, and I'm happy you enjoyed it.

Intolerant people are the people who do not believe the way we want them to, which makes us intolerant by default.—July 26, 2010

faithmairee
Senior Member
since 2011-01-05
Posts 1441
Poe Haven, USA
5 posted 2011-01-15 12:29 PM


way cool...love, love, love it!

There must be a poem in here somewhere.

JerryPat
Senior Member
since 2010-10-30
Posts 1991
Louisiana/America
6 posted 2011-01-15 02:07 PM


Thank you, faith.

Intolerant people are the people who do not believe the way we want them to, which makes us intolerant by default.—July 26, 2010

faithmairee
Senior Member
since 2011-01-05
Posts 1441
Poe Haven, USA
7 posted 2011-01-15 02:31 PM


my pleasure...it's a great poem

There must be a poem in here somewhere.

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