Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Generation. He vigorously opposed militarism, economic materialism, and sexual repression, and he embodied various aspects of this counterculture with his views on drugs, sex, multiculturalism, hostility to bureaucracy, and openness to Eastern religions.
Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac, known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist of French Canadian ancestry, who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation.
Beatnik was a media stereotype prevalent throughout the late 1940s, 1950s to mid-1960s that displayed the more superficial aspects of the Beat Generation literary movement of the late 1940s and early to mid 1950s. Elements of the beatnik trope included pseudo-intellectualism, drug use, and a cartoonish depiction of real-life people along with the spiritual quest of Jack Kerouac's autobiographical fiction.
The Beat Generation was a literary movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized throughout the Silent Generationers in the 1950s. The central elements of Beat culture are the rejection of standard narrative values, making a spiritual quest, the exploration of American and Eastern religions, the rejection of economic materialism, explicit portrayals of the human condition, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation and exploration.
"Howl", also known as "Howl for Carl Solomon", is a poem written by Allen Ginsberg in 1954–1955 and published in his 1956 collection Howl and Other Poems. The poem is dedicated to Carl Solomon.
Neal Leon Cassady was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic and counterculture movements of the 1960s.
On the Road is a 1957 novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, based on the travels of Kerouac and his friends across the United States. It is considered a defining work of the postwar Beat and Counterculture generations, with its protagonists living life against a backdrop of jazz, poetry, and drug use. The novel is a roman à clef, with many key figures of the Beat movement, such as William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Neal Cassady represented by characters in the book, including Kerouac himself as the narrator Sal Paradise.
Anne Waldman is an American poet. Since the 1960s, Waldman has been an active member of the Outrider experimental poetry community as a writer, performer, collaborator, professor, editor, scholar, and cultural/political activist. She has also been connected to the Beat poets.
John Clellon Holmes was an American author, poet and professor, best known for his 1952 novel Go. Considered the first "Beat" novel, Go depicted events in his life with his friends Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg. He was often referred to as the "quiet Beat" and was one of Kerouac's closest friends. Holmes also wrote what is considered the definitive jazz novel of the Beat Generation, The Horn.
Peter Anton Orlovsky was an American poet and actor. He was the long-time partner of Allen Ginsberg.
Jazz poetry has been defined as poetry that "demonstrates jazz-like rhythm or the feel of improvisation" and also as poetry that takes jazz music, musicians, or the jazz milieu as its subject. Some critics consider it a distinct genre though others consider the term to be merely descriptive. Jazz poetry has long been something of an "outsider" art form that exists somewhere outside the mainstream, having been conceived in the 1920s by African Americans, maintained in the 1950s by counterculture poets like those of the Beat generation, and adapted in modern times into hip-hop music and live poetry events known as poetry slams.
Mark Howe Murphy was an American jazz singer based at various times in New York City, Los Angeles, London, and San Francisco. He recorded 51 albums under his own name during his lifetime and was principally known for his innovative vocal improvisations. He was the recipient of the 1996, 1997, 2000, and 2001 Down Beat magazine readers' jazz poll for Best Male Vocalist and was also nominated five times for the Grammy Award for Best Vocal Jazz Performance. He wrote lyrics to the jazz tunes "Stolen Moments" and "Red Clay".
Blues and Haikus is the American novelist and poet Jack Kerouac's second album and was released in 1959.
Mexico City Blues is a poem published by Jack Kerouac in 1959 composed of 242 "choruses" or stanzas. Written between 1954 and 1957, the poem is the product of Kerouac's spontaneous prose, his Buddhism, and his disappointment at his failure to publish a novel between 1950's The Town and the City and 1957's On the Road.
Jack Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his method of spontaneous prose. Thematically, his work covers topics such as Catholic spirituality, jazz, promiscuity, Buddhism, drugs, poverty, and travel.
Kerouac: Kicks Joy Darkness is a 1997 spoken word tribute album featuring late Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac's work performed by various artists. Notable performers include: Michael Stipe, Allen Ginsberg, Hunter S. Thompson, Johnny Depp, and Patti Smith. Ginsberg's performance of "The Brooklyn Bridge Blues" is missing the final tenth chorus. This was due to a faxing machine error which stuck the last pages together when Ginsberg was faxed the lyrics. The final chorus is read by Eric Andersen instead, recorded on a DAT recorder from the Brooklyn Bridge.
Readings by Jack Kerouac on the Beat Generation is the third and final spoken word album by the American novelist and poet Jack Kerouac, released in January 1960 on Verve Records. The album was recorded during 1959, prior to the publication of Kerouac's sixth novel, Doctor Sax.
Ron Whitehead is an American poet, author and activist. Whitehead was born on a farm in Kentucky, but traveled to the University of Louisville and Oxford University to pursue his academic interests.
Songs of Innocence and Experience is an album by American beat poet and writer Allen Ginsberg, recorded in 1969. For the recording, Ginsberg sang pieces from 18th-century English poet William Blake's illustrated poetry collection of the same name and set them to a folk-based instrumental idiom, featuring simple melodies and accompaniment performed with a host of jazz musicians. Among the album's contributors were trumpeter Don Cherry, arranger/pianist Bob Dorough, multi-instrumentalist Jon Sholle, drummer Elvin Jones, and Peter Orlovsky – Ginsberg's life-partner and fellow poet – who contributed vocals and helped produce the recording with British underground writer Barry Miles.
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