Beat Poetry Guide: History and Examples of Beat Poetry

Beat poetry refers to the work created by Beat poets during the Beat movement, a post–World War II literary community that embraced counterculture and activism. In general, Beat poets were against capitalist American values and elite academia. Prominent figures of the Beat Generation include Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Amiri Baraka, and Diane Di Prima. Other American poets like Gregory Corso, Neal Cassady, Gary Snyder, Bob Kaufman, Hettie Jones, Herbert Huncke, and Lucien Carr also helped define the literary movement. The broader Beat Movement also included artists such as the surrealist painter Jay DeFeo and filmmaker Stan Brakhage.

The writing and activism of the movement focused on transcending the bourgeoise values of America through spiritual liberation, sexual liberation, anti-imperialism, a rejection of academic literary culture, and a demystification of recreational drugs. Zen Buddhism and other elements of Eastern religions were a central topic of study and practice for the Beats. For example, Kerouac's 1958 novel, The Dharma Bums, references Gary Snyder's move to Japan to study Buddhist practice.

The Beat poetry movement was relatively brief but culturally potent.

• Columbia University: In the early 1940s, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Hal Chase, Lucien Carr, and other writers met at Columbia University. They would go on to be associated with a movement known for rejecting academia in favor of creating American literature that lived closer to the working class.
• Greenwich Village: From the early to late 1950s, writers that were or would come to be associated with the Beat movement gathered in Greenwich Village in New York City due to the low cost of living and communal culture.
• Gallery Six: In San Francisco, California, the Six Gallery Reading took place on October 7, 1955. It featured Philip Lamantia, Michael McClure, Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, and most famously Allen Ginsberg, who gave a poetry reading of the first section of "Howl." Kenneth Rexroth served as the host of the reading. At this time, Lawrence Ferlinghetti of the City Lights bookstore in San Francisco began publishing the City Lights Pocket Poets series. He would publish Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems the following year in 1956.
• Rising popularity and resistance: In 1957, “Howl” was subject to a famous obscenity trial that was later dismissed, which further attested to the movement's values and potency in the public consciousness. Other state-led suppression efforts on Beat poets continued, including the FBI arresting Amiri Baraka and Diane Di Prima on grounds of obscenity that similarly resulted in non-indictment. Anti-war was an important theme in the Beat's work and the movement is largely considered America's first Cold War literary scene.
• Multi-faceted influence: As the popularity of the Beat writers rose, artists like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and the Beatles were influenced by their work and values. Following the murder of Malcolm X, Amiri Baraka advanced his organizing and activism. Diane Di Prima also helped to organize the Diggers as community activists in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. Between the late ’50s and early ’60s, Paris became a hotspot for members of the Beats to be inspired by French avant-garde art and political history. The Beats were a major influence on the Black Mountain Poets, another literary movement that adopted similar core values and often featured work by Beat poets in the Black Mountain Review literary magazine.
• Media mischaracterization: Popular media circulated an understanding of the Beats that was more informed by a perceived bohemian hedonism gleaned from cursory readings of Ginsberg's "Howl," Kerouac's On the Road, and Burroughs's Naked Lunch. A columnist coined the term "beatnik" as a pejorative term referring to the Beats in 1958, and in 1960, J. Edgar Hoover declared that "communists, eggheads, and beatniks" were the primary enemies of the United States. Ironically, by that time the popular conception of Beat poets had strayed from the lives of the original Beats. Tthe public viewed the movement as a frivolous fad and cultural commodity, complete with themed kitsch aesthetic media, services, and coffee shops based on hippie or hipster imagery with an over-emphasis on psychedelic and drug addict associations.
  

Explore the following poems to gain a better understanding of Beat poetry.

1. 1. “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg (1956): Perhaps the most famous text of the Beat movement, Ginsberg’s “Howl” is an epic fever dream that documents the experience of people living in the United States. It features critiques of American injustices through surreal and terrifying imagery.
2. 2. “At Tower Peak” by Gary Snyder (1956): This poem evidences Snyder’s commitment and interest in Buddhism and environmental activism.
3. 3. “Wild Dreams of a New Beginning” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1988): Ferlinghetti, responsible for the publication of many volumes of writing in the Beat Generation, presents utopian visions in this poem. This poem was published in a book of the same name in 1988.
4. 4. “I Am 25” by Gregory Corso (1956): This poem written by a young Corso documents the Beat poet’s rejection of what they viewed as a stale elitist tradition of academic poetry.

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