# Reading > Poems, Poets, and Poetry >  Beat Generation

## Farfalla

Hey I'm new here... just wondering if anyone else was into Beat Poetry, and if so what poets or poems. I'm fond of Allen Ginnsberg myself...

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving
hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for
an angry fix
angleheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavently connection to
the starry dynamo in the machinery of night
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in
the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats flating across
the topes of cities contemplating jazz,...."

Thats from his most famous poem.. "Howl"

also love Jack Kerouac....
Haiku:

"Came down from my
ivory tower
and found no world"

what do you guys think that means?

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## den

Well, _ivory tower_ has drug connotations, as well as, possibly Kerouac was commenting on academic elitism, where a person is so `specialised' in one field of study it's absurd, way out of reach from the `common' people and doesn't apply to many practical matters of life and the living. 

People who think much of themselves and in so doing alienate people from them, are said to be `in their ivory tower' looking down on people all the time thinking they're better than others. Ivory being at one time much sought after commodity, highly valuable. Now it's a taboo material of course.

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## Farfalla

Strange, I never really saw it as a statement against acedemic elitism. Seems more to me that he's trying to say that an artists is alienated, becasue its an accepted truth that to be a real artist you cant be a part of society... I think he was trying to say that he feels too real for the world around him... not in a condescending way... but almost as if thats something he cant help. He decided to try to rejoin the world...but realized he couldnt.

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## mono

I have always loved the beat poets too. Apparently there still exists a poetry writing program somewhere in Colorado, I think, where Allen Ginsberg taught; others continue the tradition. From a favorite of mine by Ginsberg:

A Supermarket in California

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for
I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache
self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went
into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families
shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the
avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you, Garcia Lorca, what
were you doing down by the watermelons?

....

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## simon

At last another Jack Kerouac fan.

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## Scheherazade

> Haiku:
> 
> "Came down from my
> ivory tower
> and found no world"
> 
> what do you guys think that means?


I read this yesterday and have been thinking about it since... Shared it with some friends too. Their opinions seem to differ.

My personal understanding is that if one shuts themselves away too long, s/he might realise that the world, i.e., the things we are alienating him/herself from, might be gone/changed. Which makes the whole 'shutting away procedure' meaningless... Like an ostrich burying her head in the sand just to realise that there was no reason to do so... 

A friend of mine has suggested that if one stops alienating themselves, then they become a part of the world. So it is not something out there anymore and you don't think of it as an outsider either. I like his interpretation too.

I would like to hear what others think on this heiku  :Smile:

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## bjortan

I think there's an element of humor to it. Sitting in your ivory tower supposedly means isolating yourself from the world. So what if you thought you were isolating yourself from the world - or perhaps rather A world - and one day discovered that that from which you thought you were isolating yourself wasn't real?

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## Farfalla

What do you mean by the world wasnt real? Like in his head it wasnt? or like the concept that nothing really exists except our own thinking? or what?

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## Farfalla

Does anyone else find this really terrible...?

I wanted to call my high school lit mag Ivory Tower and everyone immediatly started snickering...apparently the whole haiku is phallic and a sex reference. I hate people. Sorry... just thought id share my frustration

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## Scheherazade

OK, you have to tell us how it is phallic and a sex reference...

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## Farfalla

Yea.. i actually have no clue... i was hoping someone could tell me. Ugh.

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## Scheherazade

Has anyone got any suggestions? I would like to hear how you interpret this  :Smile:

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## BSturdy

I agree that it seems to be criticising academia: that being in an academic ivory tower does not address reality. The world has either ceased literally, or more likely the occupant of the ivory tower has completely lost connection with the world and cannot relate to it.

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## Farfalla

i agree with the whole losing touch with the world thing... but i dont think its critical of acedemia... its more embracing of it really. Since its in the 1st person... hes not accusing himself of being a world weary intellectual.. merely of a self imposed exile to understand his own world better and better his learning, or his art.

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## den

The Beat Generation, as a whole, started out as anti-establishment non-conforming bohemian creative types `crashing out' at friends' places or `salons' to discuss stream of consciousness beatnik babble whilst listening to jazz. This is in the late 40's and on, so, I think some background understanding of `the generation' is in order, to understand Kerouac's philosophy and attitude towards `society' at the time.

Ginsberg, Burroughs et al were rejecting a lot of `norms', striking out and exploring new things and generally being `naughty' as far as what was expected of the middle-class bourgeois. Drugs, petty thievery and getting drunk were often themes of their lives and writing and music but not the whole `scene' and a lot of people later condemned them for living the way that they did and focused on that alone and couldn't get past it to get the message. 

But they contributed a lot to `society' and the arts in general and Kerouac did have some prophetical insight into the future. 

If Kerouac is talking about _his_ ivory tower, indeed, why did he climb up there? You can't avoid the element of _distance_ or, as you say Farfalla, the `exile' that a tower suggests. Sure, self-introspection was a huge element to the beatniks, but they also practiced the new bohemian genre lifestyle of collective living and sharing.

Or, if he's speaking with disdain about someone else he can't relate to (who high up there in _their_ comfy little tower) either interpretation is profound, because, `found no world' is a sorry comment on the state of things in his or anybody's world.

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## Starving Buddha

The Beat Generation is perhaps the most important poetic movement ever. For me, Burroughs has an especial appeal. He went into realms that no one else dared to go. Nova Express... Burroughs realized such an inherent truth to reality when he warned: Stop answering the machine! Don't give in to the clip-clap of Maya.

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## B-Mental

Hi SV, welcome to the forums. I have to go back to the Ivory Tower...I guess to me it means a mountain top where there is nothing. The shear beauty and wonder of which will make the signifcance of our civilised world seem cold and non-existant. I firmly believe this, and have wandered many a torn and beautiful landscape above 10,000 feet at a slow and ambulatory pace with no desire other than to witness. SV, I like that comment at the end, and refer to Maya as Mammon. I think that it is an appropriate substitution.

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## Starving Buddha

> Hi SV, welcome to the forums. I have to go back to the Ivory Tower...I guess to me it means a mountain top where there is nothing. The shear beauty and wonder of which will make the signifcance of our civilised world seem cold and non-existant. I firmly believe this, and have wandered many a torn and beautiful landscape above 10,000 feet at a slow and ambulatory pace with no desire other than to witness. SV, I like that comment at the end, and refer to Maya as Mammon. I think that it is an appropriate substitution.


Oh mountains, pyramids, ivory towers... All examples of elevating ourselves above the medocrity of the mundane and base existence. This is the heart of spiritual enlightenment: namely- ascension. Rising, "Running up that Hill" (to quote Kate Bush). What that vantage point does, is put our modern, civilized world in its proper perspective. When compared to the sheer majesty of nature, nothing we create parallels. And the beauty of it is, that by climbing, we have the blessing of breaking away and realigning ourselves with the bigger picture.
Indeed mammon and Maya are analogous. The idea being that the material world that we manifest is illusiory and if believed in as the "truth", we will always be misled- but when the illusion is seen through, then it is like metaphorically climbing the pyramid to see the world as it is, not as it appears to be... Thanks for the welcome, and much Metta to you...

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## jon1jt

To paraphrase William Blake: "If the doors of perception were wiped clean, every thing would appear as it really is." 


i think the ivory tower gives that vantage point of the mountain, but its glass ceiling blocks the wary traveller who only contemplates or gestures about the road. no coincidence Kerouac was talking about being ON The Road. 

"The Beat Generation is perhaps the most important poetic movement ever."
~ Starving Buddha 

and as John Clellon Holmes put it in his final book about the Beats: "Nothing More To Say"

great posts, BM/SV.

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## B-Mental

Thanks jon1. I always found the "ceiling blocks" to be the clouds or skies above the mountain which is the esssence between matter and spirit.

I read Kerouac's Dharma Bums, and in it he ends up going up to a remote mountain to watch for forest fires. He really did this. Anyways, he writes that it is impossible to fall off of a mountain. I've fallen off of mountains, but always ascend again.

This is a very interesting thread.

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## jon1jt

i'm on that mountain too and see those clouds and sky you're talking about. i think Thoreau was right when he implied that the sky is not a ceiling, but that we can go right through it. next time you're near a lake, look into it's reflection. There is essence, jump right in, naked!  :Smile:  

good point about Dharma Bums---if you read Kerouac's Desolation Angels, it's actually two books that his publisher encouraged him to publish together. bad move. anyway, the first section picks up at the end of Dharma Bums as he heads for the mountain to watch forest fires. in the second he comes down from the mountain and shortly later On The Road is published and on its way to becoming a bestseller. 

Eleven years later, Kerouc dies from severe stomach bleeding induced by years of heavy drinking. 

maybe he should have stayed on the mountain, maybe not. 


In a letter seven years earlier, he wrote to a friend:
*
"I thought I was dying last summer when I started throwing up blood but I decided then and there in bed that I didn't give a s### about anything but heaven anyway..."*

RIP, Jack

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## B-Mental

I have read Desolations Angels, but was too bored to try to recall it. 




> I think Thoreau was right when he implied that the sky is not a ceiling, but that we can go right through it.


Yeah, I believe this to be true. The clouds are the appearance of the ceiling. I think he used ceiling to relate to those who sleep indoors...or live in society.

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## Starving Buddha

> i'm on that mountain too and see those clouds and sky you're talking about. i think Thoreau was right when he implied that the sky is not a ceiling, but that we can go right through it. next time you're near a lake, look into it's reflection. There is essence, jump right in, naked!  
> 
> good point about Dharma Bums---if you read Kerouac's Desolation Angels, it's actually two books that his publisher encouraged him to publish together. bad move. anyway, the first section picks up at the end of Dharma Bums as he heads for the mountain to watch forest fires. in the second he comes down from the mountain and shortly later On The Road is published and on its way to becoming a bestseller. 
> 
> Eleven years later, Kerouc dies from severe stomach bleeding induced by years of heavy drinking. 
> 
> maybe he should have stayed on the mountain, maybe not. 
> 
> 
> ...


In civil disobedience, there's a brilliant quote by Thoreau where he says that he muses because even inside the jail cell, he is more free than the ignorant people living on the outside. That is the essence of what all these artists and poets are trying to say: we create our own prisons, and we also hold the keys to release ourselves...

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## jon1jt

> In civil disobedience, there's a brilliant quote by Thoreau where he says that he muses because even inside the jail cell, he is more free than the ignorant people living on the outside. That is the essence of what all these artists and poets are trying to say: we create our own prisons, and we also hold the keys to release ourselves...


i doubt we all have that "key," for if we did there'd be more releasing. or say we do, how many have the jahones to leave their own prison? better yet, what does releasing mean exactly, anyway? 

your thoughts?

B-Mental: Desolation Angels is considered to be the highest expression of Beat spirituality taken almost verbatim from Kerouac's journals when he was up on that mountain.

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## Starving Buddha

> i doubt we all have that "key," for if we did there'd be more releasing. or say we do, how many have the jahones to leave their own prison? better yet, what does releasing mean exactly, anyway? 
> 
> your thoughts?
> 
> B-Mental: Desolation Angels is considered to be the highest expression of Beat spirituality taken almost verbatim from Kerouac's journals when he was up on that mountain.


Oh but we do all posses the key! If any one has it, then we all do! This is the universal spiritual message. Sure, most fear leaving the prison. There is comfort there. There is also desire. But beneath it all, there is suffering. 
Release means no longer being a victim of the illusion.

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## B-Mental

Hey jon1, my previous statement should read, "I read Desolation Angels, and loved it. I was too bored and absentminded to recall the name correctly." I think it was part of my motivation to quit my high paying job, and move to Montana. While I was there I was a skibum actually a snowboarder. I spent five of the best years of my life there.

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## stlukesguild

The Beat Generation is perhaps the most important poetic movement ever.
 :FRlol:   :FRlol:   :FRlol:   :FRlol:   :FRlol:   :FRlol:   :FRlol:   :FRlol:

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## jon1jt

> The Beat Generation is perhaps the most important poetic movement ever.


oh, i figured you were locked in your room listening to that newly released piece of recording of James Joyce reading Finnegan's Wake.  :Biggrin:

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## jon1jt

> Hey jon1, my previous statement should read, "I read Desolation Angels, and loved it. I was too bored and absentminded to recall the name correctly." I think it was part of my motivation to quit my high paying job, and move to Montana. While I was there I was a skibum actually a snowboarder. I spent five of the best years of my life there.


B-Mental, i must ask the same question to you that had been asked to Thoreau after he left Walden Pond: 

if you had the best years of your life there, why'd you leave?




> Oh but we do all posses the key! If any one has it, then we all do! This is the universal spiritual message. Sure, most fear leaving the prison. There is comfort there. There is also desire. But beneath it all, there is suffering.  
> Release means no longer being a victim of the illusion.


my concern is that once the chains are broken and the fear dispelled, are we not equally vulnerable to being confined to this new philosophy of freedom, preaching this mantra of life and never venturing on to anything new again? 

any thoughts anys ones?  :Smile:

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## Starving Buddha

> my concern is that once the chains are broken and the fear dispelled, are we not equally vulnerable to being confined to this new philosophy of freedom, preaching this mantra of life and never venturing on to anything new again? 
> 
> any thoughts anys ones?


Well yes... But that is until you realize there isn't anything new. Nirvana is the extinguishing of the karmic fire (the fire of desire and fear). It is the idea that there is something more to experience here that keeps us returning to the cycle of suffering. Attachments- clinging to sense stimulai. Until we consciously break these fetters, we are prisoners.

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## B-Mental

> B-Mental, i must ask the same question to you that had been asked to Thoreau after he left Walden Pond: 
> 
> if you had the best years of your life there, why'd you leave?


jon1lit

Well jon1, I encountered a series of injuries, and had no insurance! I would still be there, if I could find a way to live below the poverty line with no insurance. *IT IS* the only reason I am where I am now! I would never have left. If you want more of an answer, I will describe the depridations I endured, just PM me.

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## karo

> Well yes... But that is until you realize there isn't anything new. Nirvana is the extinguishing of the karmic fire (the fire of desire and fear). It is the idea that there is something more to experience here that keeps us returning to the cycle of suffering. Attachments- clinging to sense stimulai. Until we consciously break these fetters, we are prisoners.


Yes, there is nothing new. Samsara doesn't change.

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## stlukesguild

oh, i figured you were locked in your room listening to that newly released piece of recording of James Joyce reading Finnegan's Wake.

No... I'm actually sitting in my bean bag chair by the light of my lava lamp listening to _In a Gadda da Vidda_ and pondering the profound Shakespearean depths of Peter Orlovsky's _Clean A**hole Poems & Smiling Vegetable Songs_. :Biggrin:

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## jon1jt

> oh, i figured you were locked in your room listening to that newly released piece of recording of James Joyce reading Finnegan's Wake.
> 
> No... I'm actually sitting in my bean bag chair by the light of my lava lamp listening to _In a Gadda da Vidda_ and pondering the profound Shakespearean depths of Peter Orlovsky's _Clean A**hole Poems & Smiling Vegetable Songs_.



good comeback darth vader.  :FRlol:  orlovsky was very likely a better lover than poet.  :FRlol:

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## kiz_paws

> oh, i figured you were locked in your room listening to that newly released piece of recording of James Joyce reading Finnegan's Wake.
> 
> No... I'm actually sitting in my bean bag chair by the light of my lava lamp listening to _In a Gadda da Vidda_ and pondering the profound Shakespearean depths of Peter Orlovsky's _Clean A**hole Poems & Smiling Vegetable Songs_.


OMG, tooooo funny.  :FRlol:   :FRlol:  

Hey, this is a very good thread, guys! Carry on!  :Smile:

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## jon1jt

> OMG, tooooo funny.   
> 
> Hey, this is a very good thread, guys! Carry on!



well, um...looks like me and darth vader have our disagreements most of the time, but i can't help but like the guy, even if he's stuck in the age of antiquity.  :Tongue:  Fact: StLuke is on my Top 5 list for litnet guys i'd have a beer with, and not too long ago he even introduced me to some great piano sounds, Keith Jarrett, that i went on to buy. isn't that right, old sport?  :Biggrin:

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## vkbrasby

I haven't read much of the Beat poets and am having a hard time understanding some poems by Allen Ginsberg. Could someone please help me out? The ones I'm struggling with are "A Supermarket in California" and "America." Thanks!

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## edjer

I heard this poem over fifty years ago and haven't been able to find any reference to it anywhere. Here it is. Please forgive my spotty, incomplete memory and poor phrasing.

Jesus Christ, you made it
Far out Jewish poet.
Buggin' Roman cats
Slippin' on the nail scene

Your mother Maryo, Pro
Your father Joe,
Odd jobber, carpenter

He might have made it
In the garment district
Instead of fathering a truth.


Would anyone know who wrote this? The title?

Thank you.

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## sandy14

Hi, Edjer - I don't know the poem, but it looks like it could have been written by Coroso, perhaps. "Buggin' Roman cats" sounds like him, more than Ginsberg, or Kerouac. But I could be wrong. 

Yes, I enjoy Beat poetry and Beat writing. "Howl & other poems" dragged my appreciation of poetry into the twentieth, and now the twenty first century. After reading mostly C19th century poetry at University - Ginsberg was a revelation - and took me on a journey away, and then back to the romantics & Blake.

I had to take a break from it though, because certainly in the UK, there was too much "bad beat poetry" at poetry slams. Terrible stuff by folk who believed the "first thought, best thought" line spun by the Beats, which the drafts of their work mostly disprove. (Oddly enough, Byron also tried to convince everyone he did not revise his work either).

I have come to the view that after 60 years, poetry needs to move forward from beat poetry.

That said, I'm currently trying to read Olson's The Maximus poems. If you have not seen him perform his poetry on youtube yet, I strongly suggest you do.

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## edjer

Thank you, sandy14. I also thought of Gregory Corso. I went through everything I could find on him. I found nothing. Thanks for the tip about the Maximus poems. Good stuff.

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## Gilliatt Gurgle

Phillipa Fallon delivering a knock out piece.
(note the fella playing the piano, that's uncle Fester from the Adams Family)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVOXxDV5BdI

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## nellbromley

Hi everyone, 
I am completing the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IB) as part of my final year at high school. 
As a part of the diploma, I must write an extended essay on a topic of my choice. For this, I have chosen to write mine on Jack Kerouacs On the Road and how the journey of Sal Paradise and the other semi-intellectuals is conveyed. I was wondering what people's thoughts were on this, and whether Sal really did grow as a person as he went back and forth across America...

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