Postbeat Poets Activist Scholarship Project



In a 1966 interview with Robert Shelton, Bob Dylan said, "What I mean by 'holy' is crossing the boundaries of time and usefulness... Allen Ginsberg, he's just holy." Statements such as this mark the beginnings of the Postbeat period––a time when the reverberations of the Beat Generation were being reshaped and expanded upon by poets influenced by the works of the Beats in general and Ginberg in particular. The documents included here ascribe to the notion of the Scholar-Activist put forward by Postbeat poet Edward Sanders––a concept that occurred to him while reading Matthew Arnold's "The Scholar-Gypsy." The Scholar-Activist, wrote Sanders in a 2007 talk entitled "Writing, Social Change, and Revolution," has an undifferentiated calling for "private research and public action." The significance of the Postbeat Poets Activist Scholarship, in any period, is to illuminate poetic calling as it is now.
Allen reading "On Neal's Ashes" on stage in Ft Collins Colorado, during Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Tour, May 1976. [Allen Ginsberg Trust.]  

 

Antler
Interviewed by Porcupine

Levi Asher
"Naropa"

Jim Carroll
Interview with Nate Schweber

Andy Clausen
"Scansion This"

Andrei Codrescu
Interview with Robert Birnbaum

Jim Cohn
from "Like a Teardrop in Some Forgotten Video"

Jim Cohn
"Postbeats Poets"

Jim Cohn
Interview by Randy Roark

Jim Cohn
"A Postbeat Poets Chronology: 1962-2010."

Wanda Coleman
"What is American About American Poetry"

Wanda Coleman & Troung Tran
"Letters to Poets"

David Cope
"Play & Turn the Wheel: Midlife Poetics"

Michael Davidson
"Missing Larry: The Poetics of Disability in Larry Eigner"

Martin Espada
Interviewed by Luis Urrea

Steven Foehr
"Death and the Rebirth of Patti Smith"

Vernon Frazer
"Extending the Age of Spontaneity to a New Era: Post-Beat Poets in America"

Christopher T. Funkhouser
from "Layered Effects in Multiplex Poetry Since Black Mountain"

Steven Hirsch
Conversation with Harold Channer

Bob Holman
"What's American About American Poetry?"

Lisa Jarnot
"On Identity"

Eliot Katz
"Unlocking the Language Room of War"

Eliot Katz
Love, War, Fire, Wind: Looking Out from North America's Skull: A review by Tony Trigilio

David Meltzer and Michael Rothenberg
"ROCKPILE, Poetry, Music and The Troubadour Tradition"

Sharon Mesmer
"Twenty Years On"

Eileen Myles
"Shore Leave"

Peter Marti and Marc Olmsted
Interview by Julie Adler

Lesléa Newman
Northampton's poet laureate on writing

Marc Olmsted
"Statement of Poetics"

Pedro Pietri:
"There Was Never No Tomorrow: Nuyorican Pedro Pietri In His Own Words"

Kristin Prevallet
"Navigating the New Chaos: Anne Waldman’s Collaborations with Visual Artists"

Bob Rixon
“Happy Birthday David”

Ron Rodriguez
Washington Writers' Publishing House interview

Mary Sands & Michael Rothenberg
"Renaissance: The Beat and Beyond"

Danny Shot
"Long Shot"

Steve Silberman
"The Only Song of God"

Steve Silberman
"Who Was Cowboy Neal?"

Steve Silberman
"Married to the Guru"

Steve Silberman
"Appreciation: Poet Was Ever a Subversive Spirit: Gregory Corso Despised Pretention"

Mark Spitzer
"Bob Dylan's Tarantula: An Arctic Reserve of Untapped Glimmerance Dismissed in a Ratland of Clichés"

Anne Waldman
from "Feminafesto"

Anne Waldman
Interview by Randy Roark

Anne Waldman
"Illuminati in the Void" interview with Jim Cohn

Eliot Weinberger
"What Was Formalism?"

Saul Williams
Interview by Jason Mallory

David Willis
"Father & Son: Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan"