*Blog Menu - Poetry - Archieves*
The Beat Goes On
by Cynthia E. Jones
May, 2005
A movement with innovative literary technique, challenging society or 'The Establishment'.
I can almost see and smell the smoke filled cafe with the small crowd that has gathered and seated themselves at the tiny tables centered with candles at dusk as the author takes the stage to spill his beaten soul to the weary who wait and listen with the sound of blues played with heart.
'Beat Poetry'...a movement beginning in the early 1950's with a phrase coined in the late 1940's. It was considered more of a slang term used in America after World War II. It means exhausted or beat down with a taste of jazz rustling in its bones.
It is a word that is used to describe carnies from the circus or carnival world and also used in
reference to drugs as meaning robbed or cheated. In 1945 
Herbert Huncke introduced the word to William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac intending
the definition toward him self or against him self, and with this introduction the 'Beat Generation' was born.
The Window by Diane Di Prima
you are my bread
and the hairline noise
of my bones
you are almost
the sea
you are not stone
or molten sound
I think
you have no hands
this kind of bird flies backwards
and this love
breaks on a windowpane
where no light talks
this is not the time
for crossing tongues
(the sand here never shifts)
I think
tomorrow
turned you with his toe
and you will
shine
and shine
unspent and underground
This poem is written in the style of Beat and by one of the few prominent female writers of this form.
"The point of Beat is that you get beat down to a certain nakedness where you actually are able to see the world in a visionary way, which is the old classical understanding of what happens in the dark night of the soul." (quote from The Beat Page)
I am including a few of the writers considered part of the 'beat generation' along with a list of beat books, the top ten actually posted by The Beat Page.
- 'Beat Generation' with their works:
- Top Ten Beat Books (from The Beat Page):
- Beat Generation: Glory Days in Greenwich Village
Labels: article, litkorner2005
:UP:
:UP:
Writing Tools Defined
:Structual:
:Form:
:Language:
:Rythmic:
:Voice:
:Prose:
:Literacy Tips:
LitKorner Articles
:2003:
:2004:
:2005:
:2006:
Site Map Cynthia Jones cynthia188@msn.com Policies-Copyright.