This is not my first rodeo with John Berryman’s Dream Songs, but I feel like I have much more of an appreciation on how to read them. Upon reflection of how to do an explication of the first of them, “Dream Song 1,” I became hesitant; is it appropriate to do a close reading of a […]
“Donald Trump claims voter fraud!” After Frank O’Hara’s “Poem [Lana Turner has collapsed!]”
Donald Trump claims voter fraud! Donald Trump claims voter fraud! I was scrolling through Facebook avoiding all the things I’d promised to do and refused to begin and you said I should and that it wasn’t that much but you aren’t the one who has to do them so I wasn’t in much of […]
The Not-So-Unlikely Influence of Herman Melville on the Beats
In his essay “Herman Melville as the ‘Hip’ Icon for the Beat Generation,” Mark Dunphy draws what, after having read it, seems to be the obvious comparison between Melville’s work and that of the Beat generation. Melville’s style, both in writing and in life, set him far apart from his contemporaries, Dunphy begins, and explains […]
Frank O’Hara Learns that Billie Holliday Died
Frank O’Hara was a front-runner of the New York Poets, one who melded the school’s vision in language of cacophony and, often, absurdity. Many of his poems indite quirk, humor, and somewhat banal routines of daily life. He was famously prolific in his poetry, though much of it remained unpublished. The poem “The Day Lady Died” that […]
Fun and Play with O’Hara and His Progeny!
Jennifer Brewington’s article “The Tradition of Play in the New York School of Poets” focuses on one of the more charming aspects of our reading this week: the “play” that frequently occurs in the poetry of the New York school. She defines play as “provid[ing] a method for processing the chaos and suffering of the […]
Jazz Breath: How Jazz Influenced Beat Poetics
Culturally, jazz and Beats are often linked through a variety of similar characteristics, but the influence jazz had on Beat poetry cannot be overstated. Beat poets were overwhelmingly influenced by moves made by jazz musicians in the 1940s and ‘50s. Aspects of jazz are easily identifiable within Beat poetics: the focus on the breath of […]
[the bath] Mt. Tamalpais
The beat poets, many of whom use West Coast landscapes as their setting, piqued in me not only a sympathetic ear but also a flood of memories, emotions and sentiments about the place itself. Having lived in Berkeley for a brief two years, these readings were rife in memory associations with the objectivist bent of […]
Wobble with it – Shame v. Pride and Urban Angst of the Beat Generation
In Norman Podhoretz’s “The Know-Nothing Bohemians”, he pens an article dripping with sarcasm that rails against the Beat Generation. Its opening catalogues forerunners of the Beat Generation writers, and names the works unable to find publishers. The list ends with one that has: “but thanks to the Viking and Grove Presses two of Kerouac’s original classics, On the Road […]
Following Ginsberg Following Whitman: CloseReading “A Supermarket in California”
The first two things that are immediately apparent in Allen Ginsberg’s “A Supermarket in California” both relate to form. One is that the lines are long, with no stanza, if the groups of lines may be called that before each break, shorter than two actual lines on the page. In fact, upon editing this close […]
The “Uncertain Promise” of Jewish Youth During the Great Depression
The Objectivist poets, a title they reluctantly assumed, led me into deeper research of an era I have previously taken great interest in due to the writings of David Brooks. Raised in Manhattan by two liberal Jewish parents of the bohemian culture, he was educated at a traditional Jewish school in the city and developed […]