Just Beat It?

Jacqui Cain led the group on a literary tour of North Beach, complete with Beat poetry that mentioned or reflected the sites we visited.

Take me back to Kerouac, boys.  We are on the road again.

It is wonderful to hear people’s first reactions to Allen Ginsberg, arguably the inheritor of Walt Whitman’s personal long syntactical ramblings that somehow speak of the American experience.  Howl was that indeed, its screams echoing through North Beach alleys, vibrating NYC grates and fire escapes, and ultimately raging against the conformity of post-War America. This poem put SF back on the counter-culture map, with ironic thanks to the obscenity trials it underwent.  The 1950s were not all left to the Beaver.  Ginsburg and the other poets and “angelheaded hipsters” used jazz (and yes drugs and sex) seeking to feel alive and forge or find a meaning that wasn’t defined by the late-Capitalism of the Cold War era.

For those of you who are interested in a little more of the lights of the city, read on:

• Howl by Allen Ginsberg
• America by Allen Ginsberg
• Diane Di Prima
• On the Road by Jack Kerouac
• 1959 by Gregory Corso
• Constantly Risking Absurdity by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
• Sometime During Eternity… by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
• The Beats and Progressivism