Allen Ginsberg 'Howl'ed in San Francisco

It is the birthday of Beat poet Allen Ginsberg (1926), who wrote the epic poem Howl (1956), which he first read publicly on October 5, 1955 at the Six Gallery in San Francisco. After Ginsberg’s friend Lawrence Ferlinghetti publish it, the work caused an uproar for explicit depiction of sex acts but was eventually ruled not obscene in court. The poem includes stories about Ginsberg’s Beat friends Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Lucien Carr and others. Here is a recording of Ginsberg reading the first part of the Howl.

Happy birthday, Lawrence Ferlinghetti

It is the birthday of poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919), who founded City Lights Bookstore (the first U.S. all paperback bookstore) in San Francisco in 1953, published Allen Ginsberg's Howl, and befriended Jack Kerouac, with whom he bonded. Both were Thomas Wolfe fans, both went to Columbia University, both lived in France and both spoke French to their mothers. Ferlinghetti spearheaded the naming of the alley next to his bookstore Jack Kerouac Alley in 1988. He was a mentor of Beat poets and writers of the 1950s, including Gregory Corso, Gary Snyder, William S. Burroughs, Michael McClure, Bob Kaufman, and Diane diPrima, though he always considered himself the last of the Bohemians instead of the first of the Beats. Here is a video posted last year about Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Happy birthday, poet Allen Ginsberg

It is the birthday of Beat Generation poet Allen Ginsberg (1926), who is best remembered for his epic poem, Howl (1956), an extended criticism of conformity and capitalism in the United States. It became a central subject in a celebrated obscenity trial in 1957 for its frank depiction of heterosexual and homosexual sex acts. However, a judge ruled that the work was not obscene. The work contains stories about Ginsberg's friends, including Neal Cassady , Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Peter Orlovsky, Lucien Carr, Herbert Huncke, and Carl Solomon. It was first presented publicly on October 5, 1955 at a reading at the Six Gallery in San Francisco, leaving the audience in awe. City Lights Bookstore owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti subsequently published the poem along with several others in a volume called Howl and Other Poems (1956).

Walt Whitman, America's poet

Walt Whitman

It is the birthday of poet Walt Whitman (1819), whose poetry collection Leaves of Grass became his defining work. Whitman should be the patron saint of self-publishing. He published the first volume of his work in 1855, set the type himself for much of it and paid for the printing. Whitman had learned the printing trade as a lad and worked as a journalist for several newspapers. But what he really wanted to do was write poetry, and he kept at it all his life.

Leaves of Grass found an immediate audience, and drew immediate criticism as well. Whitman sent a copy of it to poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was by then a prominent poet. Emerson's praise for the book spurred him to continue work on it all his life. Emerson had written an essay noting the need for a truly American poet, writing of the young country's culture. Whitman's vision was to make Leaves of Grass an epic, with no less a model than Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.

Scholars can't agree on just how many editions there were (it depends on how you count editions) but there were at least six and maybe as many as nine. The volume grew from a thin book of 12 poems to a 384-page second edition. Whitman continued to revise and rework his book throughout his life, even working on it as he lay ill in bed at the end of his life. His so-called "deathbed edition" was published in 1891-92.

The book engendered plenty of criticism, especially for its sexual imagery and frank treatment of death. Whitman really didn't seem to care about his detractors, even though the book cost him one of his many jobs—a nice one at the Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C. At one point, he refused to remove portions of the book objected to by his publisher, choosing instead to find another publisher.

Whitman left a huge legacy. Critic Harold Bloom included Leaves of Grass on an American literature must-read list along with Moby-Dick and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Whitman was a hero of the Beat Generation. Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Gary Snyder all admired him. Composers Benjamin Britten, Leonard Bernstein, Frederick Delius, Kurt Weill, and Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote music to some of his poetry. Expatriate poet Ezra Pound called him "America's poet."

Happy birthday, poet Gary Snyder

Gary Snyder

It is the birthday of Beat-era poet Gary Snyder (1930), who won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1975 for his collection Turtle Island. The title is a Native American term for North America. Snyder's work reflects his interest in Native American culture, Buddhism, Japanese and Chinese culture, naturism and rural life. He grew up in the Northwest and became associated with the Beat Generation in San Francisco, where he met poet Kenneth Rexroth and participated in the famous Six Gallery poetry reading in 1955, which many scholars consider the beginning of the Beat movement in California and the beginning of the San Francisco artistic renaissance. Other young poets, Michael McClure, Philip Lamantia, Allen Ginsberg and Philip Whalen (a college roommate of Snyder), participated in the reading. Ginsberg read an early draft of his epic poem Howl and Jack Kerouac was in the large, enthusiastic audience. Snyder inspired the main character in Kerouac's novel The Dharma Bums. Snyder introduced Kerouac to life in the backcountry and rural living. Lawrence Ferlinghetti called Snyder the Thoreau of the Beat Generation. Snyder wrote more than 20 books of poetry. He studied in Japan and traveled extensively in the Far East.

Gregory Corso, youngest Beat poet

Gregory Corso

It is the birthday of the youngest Beat poet, Gregory Corso (1930), who grew up living on the streets in the Lower East Side of New York, did prison terms in New Jersey's toughest institution, audited classes in Greek and Roman literature at Harvard (where he passed as a student until he was found out) and was befriended by Archibald MacLeish (then a dean at Harvard), who let him stay at Harvard as a poet in residence. He met Allen Ginsberg in a lesbian bar in Greenwich Village, where he entertained the patrons with his poetry, and eventually became part of the circle of Beat poets. Corso collaborated with the likes of Jack Kerouac, Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. He hung out with them in Paris and Tangiers and San Francisco. "Corso's a poet's Poet, a poet much superior to me," wrote Ginsberg. "Pure velvet ... whose wild fame's extended for decades around the world from France to China, World Poet." As a child, Corso had been told by his gruff father that his teenaged mother had abandoned the family and returned to Italy. Some 67 years later, he learned she had been abused by his father, put the baby in the care of Catholic Charities and fled to New Jersey, and eventually started a new family. Corso and his mother were reconciled in his later years and developed a good relationship before his death in 2001. 

Lawrence Ferlinghetti is 93 today

Photo by Voxtheory

It is the birthday of poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919), who founded City Lights Bookstore (the first U.S. all paperback bookstore) in San Francisco in 1953, published Allen Ginsberg's Howl, and befriended Jack Kerouac, with whom he bonded. Both were Thomas Wolfe fans, both went to Columbia University, both lived in France and both spoke French to their mothers. Ferlinghetti spearheaded the naming of the alley next to his bookstore Jack Kerouac Alley in 1988. He was a mentor of Beat poets and writers of the 1950s, including Gregory Corso, Gary Snyder, William S. Burroughs, Michael McClure, Bob Kaufman, and Diane diPrima, though he always considered himself the last of the Bohemians instead of the first of the Beats. Publication of Ginsberg's Howl landed him in court charged with selling obscene material in a landmark First Amendment case that ended in acquittal for both him and Ginsberg, and established precedent for publishing controversial work with redeeming social value. Ferlinghetti wrote the best-selling poetry collection Coney Island of the Mind (1958) as well as more than 50 other poetry collections, journals, plays and fiction.

Kerouac: The road, the books, the people

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Jack Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922. He died in St. Anthony’s Hospital in St. Petersburg 47 years later. In the intervening years, he went to Columbia University, did a stint in the Merchant Marines, joined the Navy twice, hitchhiked across America, wrote 19 novels as well as books of poetry and other works, and drank -- a lot.

He hung out with the likes of Beat poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and Gregory Corso, writers Williams S. Burroughs and Herbert Huncke, and editors Robert Giroux and Lucien Carr.

An eclectic selection of Kerouac's writings is in the collection of rare and unusual books at Lighthouse Books, ABAA. Among them: Visions of Gerard, The Dharma Bums, Big Sur, Vanity of Duluoz, Pomes All Sizes and Pic. Another slim volume, The Kerouac We Knew, contains essays by people who had met Kerouac at various stages in his life.

When Jack was four years old, his big brother, Gerard, died of rheumatic fever. Gerard was nine. Jack always believed that his brother followed him as a guardian angel, though some suggest that given Kerouac’s lifestyle, he might have needed a whole platoon of such guardians. Kerouac wrote about his brother in Visions of Gerard in 1956, just before his most famous novel, On the Road, was published. Gerard wasn’t published, however, until 1963.

For a time in the 1950s, Kerouac lived in the College Park section of Orlando with his mother. That’s where he wrote The Dharma Bums. It’s also where he lived when On the Road was published and came quickly to fame. The Dharma Bums is an account of a mountaineering adventure Kerouac undertook with poet Gary Snyder (who introduced him to Buddhism) and friend John Montgomery. The trip proved a sharp contrast with the city life Kerouac knew well.

Kerouac’s native language was French (His parents were French-Canadian). He didn’t speak English confidently until he was a teenager. Early on, Kerouac attempted to write books in French, but eventually wrote mostly in English. Interestingly, this is the first French edition of The Dharma Bums.

After the success of On the Road, Kerouac sought refuge in the mountains as a guest at Ferlinghetti’s cabin to escape the demands of an adoring public. His book, Big Sur, is a fictionalized version of that episode in his life. It depicts a popular writer, Jack Duluoz, who is mentally and physically exhausted. The book was published in 1962.

Six years later, Kerouac published another book about his alter ego, Vanity of Duluoz. This one dealt with the writer’s teenage years and coming of age. It includes his time at Columbia and in the Navy during World War II. It ends at the beginning of the Beat movement. Kerouac lived in St. Petersburg when this book was published. It was the last published before his death.