Rough Draft 2:

The San Francisco Beats

People usually imagine the 50s as an era of innocence, when really it was filled of ignorance, lies, and dead American Dreams. But art was created in the mist of the depression of the post war world, and was hidden in the land of the Bohemia. It was a land filled of drugs, sex, and the rebels of the 50s. A land most innocents ignored and denied. But it was also home to the poets of the Beat Generation. New York and San Francisco were and are still where this land of Bohemia flourishes. The thing is that many people (like me) seem to forget that the Beats were apart of San Francisco. This was the reason I chose to write about this, because I have lived my whole life in San Francisco, but because I was confined to a crappy suburb I was ignorant. Thanks to the media (tv and movies) I always believed that New York was where all the poets chilled out. And that San Francisco was filled of random artists, homosexuals, and hippies. Yes, the Beat generation may have started in New York, but it found its way to the heart of San Francisco. It gave reason to the poets and found its way into the poetry of the Beats.

The Beats were revolutionary, a counterculture of sorts. They were known for exploring new areas of consciousness by using drugs, and also they rumored about never editing. Allen Ginsberg was a big protagonist of these ideas. “He was a genius. Another thing about Allen was, you can say that the ‘graph of consciousness school’ of poetry was great when he did it or when another of the originators did it. Allen had a genius mind. He had a pack-rat mind” (Meltzer 103). And he did have a “pack-rat mind”, because one the main attributes of this “consciousness” idea was to just let it all out and allow your stream of consciousness to take control. Let your mind be unconfined. This is one reason why many people believe that a lot of the Beat writings had no meaning at all, because the point of it was to just write whatever came to mind. To be liberated of meaning. William Blake, one of Allen’s biggest influences, had something similar: “Illuminated voice” (Portuges 3). Allen was also a devoted Buddhist who used chants to calm people down in time of violence. Buddhism also inhabits the idea of losing connection and allowing everything to be one. And because of this obsession he spent 15 years (1948-63) wanting to find the breakthroughs in average consciousness. Kerouac believed in this idea as well and “initially typed ‘On the Road’ on a 150-foot-long paper roll, not wanting to stop and change paper while he was on fire with idea” (Pekar 23). These ideas were some of the things that tied these poets together, but none of this would have ever happened if not for New York.

The beginnings of the Beats begin to fall to place in the late 40s, once Allen Ginsberg stumbled upon Lucien Carr one winter day at Columbia University (Morgan 2). Allen was a nerd and a “brilliant but shy social fuckup” (Pekar 51). His family “was Jewish in name only, and both of Allen’s Parents were fully agnostic” (Morgan 3). His father was a socialist, and his mother a communist. She would even bring Allen to party cell meeting, but then he was too naive to understand a thing. Carr was a handsome rebel who barely cared. He moved to New York after he spent some time for attempting suicide in Chicago’s Cook County Hospital (Morgan 1). Instead of studying he spent his time with any interesting person he could find, and this is why he met Allen and later introduced him to William S. Burroughs and David Kammer. Bill was the son of the man who invented the modern adding machine so he was from a fortunate family. When he met Ginsberg, Burroughs had already done most of the things Allen had dreamed of, and this was why Bill became a sort of mentor and idol for Allen. Kammerer only was in New York because he had followed Carr there. He was infatuated with him and stalked him in hopes that the straight Carr would fall for him as well. Sadly this lead to a drunken argument which that continued until Carr stabbed Kammerer dead and dropped him into the Hudson River (Pekcar 12). Kerouac and Burroughs ended up collaborating on a novel based off the murder Carr called And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks. But the meeting of these four marked the beginning of a wonderful friendship that would change literature as we know it.

Now that was the beginning of the Beat Generation, but it did not boom into something big until after the October 7, 1955 reading of Howl. Where was this reading? Yes, in San Francisco where Howl was also written while Allen lived with Peter Orlosvski on Nob Hill. Though the poem mostly alludes to New York it also has allusions about San Francisco like in one of my favorite stanzas:

“who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for

impossible criminals with golden heads and the

charm of reality in the in their hearts who sang sweet

blues to Alcatraz” (Ginsberg 18).

At the time of the spillage of words that became Howl Allen had been under the influence of peyote (Portuges 123). Peyote is a type a cactus that is a psychoactive drug (a drug that alters consciousness). Seems like the perfect drug for Allen. He actually mentions it in the poem: Peyote solidities of halls” (Ginsberg 10). This plant brought about a poem that forever changed the lives of the Beats and the San Francisco poets. “Mcclaire said the day after the reading that Ginsberg had turned from a nebbish to an ‘epic vocal bird.’ His reading of Howl had to have created more interest in poetry and the Beats than anything in memory” (Peckcar 37). This poem was so strong because “he tied the composition together with strong words that condemned the dehumanizing nature of America’s corporate culture. Many in the audience were aware that Ginsberg was making poetry out of his innermost thoughts in a way that had never been done before. Nothing was hidden behind a veil of poetic rhetoric. All his feelings were laid bare, undiluted and direct, exposing society’s raw nerve to a group attentive listener ((Morgan 2010, 103). That first reading of Howl became the glue that kept Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs forever united with the poets of San Francisco.

It also is what helped give Lawerence Ferlinghetti the enthusiasm to finally ask Ginsberg for a manuscript: “I greet you at the beginning of your career. When do I get the manuscript?” (Morgan 2010, 104). And with this came Howl and Other Poems which was published by Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Publishing in San Francisco. City Lights is not just a publishing company though, it is what some have called the best bookstore in the world (google it someone really has called it that). Not only was it the first all paperback cover bookstore in the country, but it also was one of the first that encouraged customers to roam around, sit, and read. It even became one of Allen’s favorite bookstores to hang around (Morgan 2003, 1). All of this and the generation of untamed writers who were published by them made City Lights a Beat monument. And Lawerence was a Beat poet as well, writing what Allen described as an “adaption of ‘French loose verse--- that you get out of Prevert and Cendrars and a few other poets--- to the American style” (Hoover 42). Ferlinghetti came to San Francisco in 1950 and thought he had discovered Alantis. He fell for North Beach: “I certainly saw North Beach especially as a poetic place, as poetic as some quartiers in Paris, as any place in old Europa, as poetic as any place great poets and painters had found inspiration” (Ferlinghetti). And in this he found inspiration immediately and wrote a poem about a North Beach scene:

“Away above a harborful

of caulkless houses

among the charley noble chimneypots

of a rooftop rigged with clotheslines

a woman pastes up sails

upon the wind

hanging out her morning sheets

with wooden pins

O lovely mammal

her nearly naked breasts

throw taut shadows

as she stretches up

to hang at last the last of her

so white washed sins

but it is wetly amorous

and winds itself about her

clinging to her skin

So caught with arms upraised

she tosses back her head

in voiceless laughter

and in choiceless gesture then

shakes out gold hair

while in the reachless seascape spaces

between the blown white shrouds

stand out the bright steamers

to kingdom come” (Ferlinghetti).

San Francisco had inspired him, just like it had inspired the Renaissance writers and would the Beats.

But there was a crazy poetic renaissance going on in San Francisco before the Beats even came about. Though sometimes it is considered part of the Beat Generation, because of that 1955 reading that united these poets together (Pekar 97). The most important person in the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance was the dubbed godfather: Kenneth Rexroth. Kenneth was a “walking encyclopedia” who did not even finish high school. He had always had a love of poetry, but like many writers took many jobs. In the 40s he had become a major poet in the San Francisco art scene: “He was publishing his poetry and wrote regularly for ‘The Saturday Review’ as well as local publications. His influence is dealth with in William Everson’s ‘Rexroth: Shaker and Maker’” (Pekar 100). He created a group called the “Anarchists’ Circle” with who he held meetings and readings. These “Anarchist Circle” events were attended by as many as 200 people. During this time and the 50s San Francisco started to become a big center for poetry. And I can’t help but blame his literary talent and dedication. Some of the other Renaissance poets and artists (since DeFeo happens to be a painter) were: Micheal and Joanna McClure, Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley, Bob Kaufman, Jay DeFeo, Bruce Conner, Larry Jordan, and David Meltzer (Pekar 142). That 1955 reading blended this renaissance with the Beats, and made them defined as one.

The reading was in The Six Gallery. All organized by Kenneth Rexthroth, “who acted as the event’s master of ceremony since he was the only person who actually knew all the poets slated to read” (Morgan 2010, 101). The Beat Artist, Jay DeFeo’s, artwork was on exhibit during the reading. She was also in the audience as was Kerouac, Cassady and Ferlinghetti. The first poet up was Lamantia, who was not really declared a Beat poet, but he did have associations with the Beat Generation, but he had more in comment with the Surrealists. “Philip Lamantia was a visionary poet, open to sudden revelation, and bent on exploring ‘the supreme disalienation of humanity and it’s language” (Pekar 140). At the reading, instead of reading his own work, he read the poetry of his recently dead friend John Hoffman. These poems were “laconic and surreal, unlike anything the listeners had heard at a poetry reading before” (Morgan 2010, 102). Next was Michael McClure the youngest poet of the bunch, and he read a poem by another San Franciscan, Robert Duncan who was more associated with Black Mountain poetics (Hoover 29). Though it seems that all different poetic groups of this generation all kind of blurred in to the Beats, even if they did not want to be.

[there will be more here. I just keep adding bit by bit. And when I think I can’t do no more, I read it all again and add more. Yeah, so help me. I need help. I used to never ask for help, but now it seems like that is the wise and mature thing to do. Also, about the poem by Ferlinghetti because I am questioning it myself. But I put it there because I alluded it, and had the poem at hand so I thought "Why not??!" But now all I can think is "My goodness it is taking up most of a page!" So tell me if you like it like that, if I should add more information about "how it inspired him" or if it should just go, completely. I should also add that the poem is untitled.]

In conclusion, the New York Beats united with the Renaissance poets and then on San Francisco was and forever will be a main center for poetry and art. From the Renaissance to the Beats to the hippies and especially the now. “The Beats were like the Stone Age hippies, in that they anticipated and articulated many of the themes that became the main tenants of the 1960s counterculture : pacifism and Buddhism, the first voicings of an ecological consciousness, the expansion of consciousness by psychedelics, hedonistic sex and homosexuality, all of which in reality comprised a ‘youth revolt’ against what was seen as a repressive conformist culture,” Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Morgan XIV). In today’s culture you will still find these anti-comformist bohemians. Actually, in San Francisco the streets are filled of them. These folks are people are inspired by the Beats, and the Hippies who were inspired by the Beats. These are kids who inspire to keep the beliefs of these major countercultures alive. Sure, with time some things must die, like the idea of free love. But yet there are aspects of it that still live on, because people are still influenced by these generations. You could even call me one of these people.

At this moment it is exactly 8 pages.