Beat News: March 4 1998

1. Some new books are out. I haven’t read ‘Beat Spirit: The Way of the Beat Writers As a Living Experience’ by Mel Ash yet, but it looks appropriately unusual. On the more informational front, Steven Watson’s ‘Birth of the Beat Generation‘ is probably the friendliest general history of the Beat literary movement I’ve seen. The author has also written books about the Harlem Renaissance, the Avant-Garde Arts movement etc., and he approaches the Beats with refreshing curiousity and no pretensions, obsessions or axes to grind. The book came out a couple of years ago, but has just been rereleased in paperback with a new foreword by Robert Creeley.

Moving out onto a limb, Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac and Carolyn Cassady show up in bed together, or close to it, in ‘Three In Love: Menages a Trois from Ancient to Modern Times,’ a fascinating new book about notable three-way sexual encounters in Western history. Other intellectual notables who show up in this book include Nietzsche, Henry Miller and the Pre-Raphaelites. The three co-authors (a man and two women, hmm, I wonder …) cover a lot of cultural territory in this book.

Moving further out into the realm of the thoroughly subjective, I’ve been corresponding via email with a Beat-inspired young poet from Singapore, Yong Shu Hoong. He sent me a copy of his first book of poetry, titled ‘Isaac.’ The truth is, I have lots of email friends who send me samples of their beat-inspired poetry, but too often when I read the poems they go in one ear and out the other — the poems are probably excellent, I just don’t understand them. But I browsed through ‘Isaac’ and it immediately clicked with me. I love imagining the Singapore poetry reading that must have inspired this poignant small poem, entitled: “THE BUTCHERING OF HOWL”:


You must think that I was rude
but I have no disrespect for you,

knowing that you are a poet
more adept at toying with Chinese words.
But listening to you attempt a reading
of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl
(and in thr process mispronounce
Arkansas) just weeks after his death,
I’m sorry I had to reach for the door.
I know you were doing it
out of the best intentions.

I know you were spurred on
by more than a little courage.
But I couldn’t help feeling indignant
at the mutilation of
his words, his anger, his genius,
turning to leave before you could even
flip the first page. Heavy-hearted,
I was never so sorry for any dead poet.

2. I pledged in these pages, after poet Denise Levertov died at the end of last year, that there would be no more legendary Beat figures dying in 1998. Well, it’s only February and God has already called my bluff. Jack Micheline, highly authentic American street poet who stayed untamed to the end, died on a San Francisco BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) train on February 27. Jo Grant of Bookzen.com has prepared a beautiful tribute page.

3. Damn, I hate this sad stuff. John Cassady sent me and a few other people a really touching note on February 3rd, the 30th anniversary of the death of his father Neal. It got me thinking.

Intrepid Trips (the really excellent new website by Ken Kesey, Ken Babbs and the rest of the Merry Pranksters up in Oregon, who also continue to run Key-Z.com) put the letter up as part of their growing Neal pages.

4. I used to always say official websites sucked, plain and simple. I still believe this in theory, but you’ll notice I linked to two good official websites above (run by Ken Kesey and the Henry Miller

Library.) I should mention one more: the really carefully-put-together and innovative BobDylan.com. The most amazing thing about the site is probably the RealAudio recordings of rare live songs, not little snippets of songs but full tracks previously available only on bootlegs. This is good stuff. My friend Dan Levy designed this site, and I helped with some technical parts myself, so I know how hard Dan worked to make this “official site” not suck. And it doesn’t!

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