VERNON FRAZER
EXTENDING THE AGE OF SPONTANEITY TO A NEW ERA:
POST-BEAT POETS IN AMERICA
PREFACE
I’d like to begin by saying that I’m
speaking from the perspective of a poet and editor, not a scholar. A
considerable amount of this discussion of Post-Beat writers comes from my
observations as a writer who reads the literary magazines in which his work
appears, and from editing Selected Poems by
Post-Beat Poets, an anthology that introduced me to a number of
exciting poets whose work, I believe, deserves more attention than it’s
received.
INTRODUCTION
The years following the end of World War Two
launched an Age of Spontaneity that transformed American culture so markedly
that a person living in 1950 would barely recognize the
If the Age of Spontaneity has passed from
the public eye, its spirit remains alive in the generations of artists that
have succeeded the innovators of the era. Rap has nearly replaced Rock as the
popular music of young, rebellious people. While bop adheres to conventions
established by Parker and his colleagues a half-century earlier, the umbrella
term “jazz” now covers, in addition to bop, the new and continuing developments
within free improvisation and jazz-rock, as well as the eclectic fusions of
musical idioms that happen regularly. Literature has incorporated idioms such
as Magic Realism, Language Poetry, Slam Poetry and Visual Poetry into a
multi-cultural canon that is still forming. If the Age of Spontaneity has
passed, a Culture of Spontaneity continues despite a lack of critical and
public attention. One of the groups that explores the
artistic terrain of the new era acknowledges its debt to the exploratory spirit
of the Beats. Although most of its writers eschew labels, a number of them use a descriptive shorthand that acknowledges their past
influences while pointing toward the next cutting edge. They call themselves
“Post-Beat.”
IMPACT OF BEATS ON AMERICAN CULTURE
If you were to conduct a “Man in the Street”
interview today about the Beat Generation, the person you stopped would very
likely dismiss it as a 1950's phenomenon. The Beats generated remarkable
controversy when On the Road’s
exuberant chronicle of living outside the cultural norms appeared to challenge
the Ozzie and Harriet values of
mid-fifties
Consequently, we can focus on the Beats’
accomplishments instead of their notoriety. The Beats continued a centuries-old
literature of human discontent aspiring toward transcendence, continued an
alternative American literary tradition, opened the subject matter of
literature to previously forbidden lifestyles and contributed to mixedmedia experimentation in the arts. They drew insight
and inspiration from a tradition of underground writers living in other
countries and other times, including Celine, Rimbaud, Dostoevsky and Blake. In
addition, they were a homegrown product that Lawrence Ferlinghetti
once described as “a continuing tradition in American writing, going back to
Walt Whitman and Poe and Jack London, beyond the Beats, who were only one phase
of this literature, continuing today in new outsiders.”1 A number of
these new outsiders are Post-Beat writers.
While continuing the traditions of
underground writing, Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs extended the range of
subject matter acceptable in literature. In launching the rucksack revolution
he later disavowed, Kerouac launched a generation of writers whose roots, like
his own, lay outside
As a group, the Beats revived poetry—and
fiction—as oral forms, often reciting their work in a mixed-media context. Jack
Kerouac’s reading his prose to jazz accompaniment with a musician’s timing
represented an early form of the performance art that has evolved since the
1960's. Reading poetry to jazz, while not a Beat invention,
has become a legitimate component of Beat and Post-Beat expression. Late in his
life, William Burrough’s Spoken Word recordings became
popular among a younger generation. Ginsberg premiered “Howl” at the “Six at
the Six” reading that launched his career and brought wider attention to San
Francisco Poets. The Poetry Slam competitions that emerged in the late 1970s
continued the Beats’ revival of the oral tradition and increased public
awareness of poetry. The Slams are, at least in part, a Post-Beat development.
In the Age of Spontaneity, the Beats weren’t
the only artists drawing lines in the cultural sand. In the early 1940's, jazz afficionado Kerouac frequented
FRAGMENTATION AND CONGLOMERATION: A
GENERATION OF TRANSITION
By 1961, the media had reduced the Beats to
a phenomenon perceived as passé while kept on life support by “beatniks”
playing bongos and folk guitars on college campuses, on television shows and in
humor magazines. The times, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, were changing. As the
cultural cocktail of Rock and LSD opened the doors of bohemian perception to
the young adults of the 1960's, the media replaced the Beats with the Hippies.
While the literary bohemians coming of age
in the sixties developed their craft, commercial forces developed that would
hinder their attempts to bring their work to the public. When Rock became the
medium through which the younger generation voiced its personal and social
concerns, journalists who previously would have sought John Updike’s opinion on
Civil Rights or the Vietnam War were more likely to seek Jim Morrison’s. In the
American marketplace, the writer became a devalued currency.
In the early 1970's, conglomerate
corporations purchased book publishers and changed the nature of publishing.
Before the takeovers, independent publishers would risk losing money on
literary works they considered culturally important. Since the takeovers,
corporate-owned book publishers have risked less money on titles that might
have cultural significance because sales of prospective bestsellers don’t
always earn back the multi-million dollar advances given to the authors. For
related reasons, literary magazines such as the ones that introduced
sophisticated readers to new and innovative authors in the 1950s and early 1960s
seldom appear on bookstore shelves.
The nature of marketing books also changed.
If the work of the Beats helped increase awareness of Gay Rights, Feminism and
other social issues, the corporate publishers developed a “niche market” for
any special interest capable of generating a profit. University-based literary
developments such as metafiction, surfiction
and avantpop fiction created their own academic niche
markets, which fragmented the younger generation of authors whose work built
upon the “black humor” of Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, Joseph Heller and
Burroughs, narrowing their audience while targeting it. Even the Beats became a
lucrative niche market.
In a literary world composed largely of a
commercial mainstream and numerous niche markets, a number of authors who might
be considered Post-Beat have published in areas that aren’t considered
Post-Beat. A gay Post-Beat writer might write strictly for a gay niche market,
whereas Ginsberg’s work integrated his sexual orientation with the rest of his life
and his concerns with the world around him. A Post-Beat feminist would face a
similarly restrictive publishing option. The fragmentation of the literary
world diminished the likelihood that Post-Beat writers could find outlets for
their work because the major publishers focus on popular poets or public
figures who write poetry. The less-celebrated poets sought publication in the
university presses, the small presses or, more recently, the micropress with vary degrees of success.
Despite the fragmentation, Post-Beat writing
didn’t develop in insolation. Some Post-Beats
partied, read and published with their literary influences. Those closest in
age to the original Beats published in Beat journals while the others published
their own magazines, eventually, with the help of the youngest Post-Beats,
using computer technology to publish their work in cyberspace.
The evolution from Beat to Post-Beat
includes a number of transitional figures, most notably Allen Ginsberg and Anne
Waldman. Ginsberg shared his knowledge generously with younger poets. His
continuing interest in innovation often led him to explore the same artistic
terrain as his Post-Beat successors. He co-founded the Jack Kerouac School of
Disembodied Poetics with Anne Waldman at
Anne Waldman has affinities with several
literary “camps.” Her association with Beat writers and her role as Director
and co-founder of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics place her
solidly—but not simply—in the Beat camp. As the former Director of the Poetry
Project at St. Mark’s Church, she could be considered a member of the
DEFINING POST-BEAT: A PROCESS IN PROCESS
Defining Post-Beat poses a challenge similar
to Wittgenstein’s discussion in Philosophical
Investigations about the difficulties inherent in defining a game.
Wittgenstein said, “We do not know the boundaries because none have been drawn.”
The boundaries of Post-Beat literature have
never been drawn.
Unlike the Beats, the Post-Beats never
existed as a literary movement, or even a closely-knit network. They aren’t so
much a movement as a presence that emerged spontaneously throughout the
The Post-Beats are an extension of Beat
philosophy and writing into new generations. As Post-Beat poet and fiction
writer Kirpal Gordon wrote in a recent e-mail
concerning the Post-Beats, “they are carrying it further rather than carrying
it on.” The Post-Beats consider the original Beats their inspiration, and, in
some cases, their mentors. Insofar as the Post-Beats don’t seek to imitate work
of the Beats but to advance it, they continue the underground literary
traditions of Europe and the
Writers in the alternative culture’s
literary circles began to use the term “Post-Beat” around 1980. Steve Dalachinsky’s 1980 poem, “Post
- Beat - Poets (We Are Credo #2)” portrays the differences between
the Beats and the Post-Beats:
Post - Beat - Poets (We
Are Credo #2)
-
“Now’s the Time” - Charlie Parker
we are the post beat poets we are the t.v.
generation
we are the true light of dope sex & profanity
we are the afterthoughts of post war experimentation
we are the results of a nation in turmoil & change
we are the ultimate over 30 crowd
spoiled seasoned & prejudiced
we are the Atom bomb Anathemas & the LSD Corruptors
we made pot a household word
and caused our parents to rebel
we have tried to make clear
all the knowledge that has been put down before us
we are the post-beat poets
inspired by tigers
queers
wife killers
yage eaters
bookshop owners
freedom fighters
junkies
priests & jazz.
we tried the coast on advice of holy word
and read the holy zen scripture
on lonely beaches
with wine and music
in lonely forests
awake on pills
& settled back slowly into city lights
where hearts have always seemed
to once again return.
some of us have families
& work hard
while some take it easy the hard way
some of us lived in the open like Jack
& now spend hours in front of the tube
angry & anti our former liberal selves
but we all still write our words their words all words
for our SELF & everyone
we get crazy drunk like Corso yet sweeter
flowers never grew
& holier-than-thou like Ginsberg
we get satirically surreal like Burroughs
adding up time like so many star ship stereo ghosts
we shot it too
& watched it too
drawing those demons in the chelsea hotel
we’ve become chroniclers of each others’ lives
sifting styles & stealing moonbeams
as we sit with mother earth between our toes
swooning
we go off to monasteries to worship the fat man
& write the haiku
we never forget our friends
occasionally one of us disappears
into the karmic mists of forever
never to return
& others just remain silent & musical
growing more profound every year
we are the post beat poets
becoming more certain & proud of our immediate heritage
while discovering the cool night eyes of the honey-colored cat
lying lazy on the carpet near the color t.v.
hip & classless
very primitive 20th century
very well informed
we all have our specialties
our meanings
our personal styles
our beliefs
always changing & always the same
we
all have our time & our time has come.
Dalachinsky’s poem describes the affinity of the Post-Beat poets
with their Beat ancestors, then takes the reader through the social upheavals
of the sixties (“we are the ultimate over 30 crowd”) to the present day, where
the Post-Beats live diverse lifestyles, some as edgy as the original Beats,
others “discovering the cool night eyes of the honey-colored cat/lying lazy on
the carpet near the color t.v.”
The Post-Beats differ from the Beats because
the
Whereas the Beats lived in bohemian fashion
for much of their lives, many Post- Beats enjoy financially secure lifestyles.
While many of them have lived on
Nevertheless, many Post-Beats maintain more
than a casual interest in spiritual development. Some meditate in Buddhist
monasteries or take classes that fuse Eastern disciplines with Western
psychology. A significant number, on the other hand, have immersed themselves
in the post-Huncke world of kicks, an area of
Post-Beat life and literature shaped in part by the belated emergence of
Charles Bukowski, a major influence on many Post-Beat
writers.
Bukowski, early in his career, turned down an invitation to
appear in a Beat anthology. From the early 1970's on, however, his work
influenced a number of Post-Beats. A hard-drinking loner who worked at dead-end
jobs in factories and mail rooms, spent days at the racetrack betting on
horses, and slept with women as dissolute as he was, he portrayed his
freewheeling trek through the furnished rooms of Los Angeles in a no-nonsense style
that appealed to many Post-Beats, especially those working at similar jobs or
in the service sector. Whereas Kerouac emerged from his blue-collar background
in certain respects, Bukowski immersed himself in
his. Bukowski’s influence extended the range of
Post-Beat poetry and prose to include a more direct style of writing and a
range of subject matter that rarely found expression in any generation’s
Bukowski’s influence, along with the Beats’, informs the Poetry
Slams that gained popularity in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Poetry Slams
offer reading venues for a variety of poets, some of them Post-Beat. The poems
tend to be autobiographical and the recitations frequently include an element
of performance. Some slam venues, such as the Nuyorican
Poets Café in
The young man, shot twice
and painfully,
had been on earth long enough
(not too long sway the flowers)
to know the difference
between lambswool and polyester,
pain and an upward stare into nowhere.
He'd choose the former
in both cases ordinarily,
but on this day,
out of a wilding world,
there came two missiles, errant
hot strangers to his shape,
tearing into his back and side.
Bleeding in public
and fighting sleep, he fell awake
as into a state of babyhood,
where each moment swells
to yards of cushioned time and desired speech;
but the sharp burning holes
kept him croaking in his speech.
Besides, from where I stood
I could hardly hear
above the shrill mill of gawkers.
Did he say "no, wait" or "it's late"?
He seemed embarrassed
as if his accident
were a finger pointing at us.
And then the crowd came closer;
the police cars whirred and stopped.
Increasingly, there was less to see
or feel. Alone,
I pulled the feelings home,
as if on a weighted leash.
Wallenstein places us at the urban core of
Post-Beat America, a world in which shootings border on the commonplace.
“Wilding,” a term used to describe assaults that took place in
Yet Post-Beat retains the Beats’ urge toward
transcendence, as in Layne Russell’s “Death in the Meadow”:
light light light
surrender
light
consumed
light
energy of being
light
no one
light
how long
suspended sky time
how long
the white
how long
the lifeless body lying
no
I
only
is
is
Russell’s poem seeks the mystical
understanding that occurs when being surrenders itself to non-being. Her quest
as non-quest occurs with a tranquility seldom found in Ginsberg’s visionary
works, in which immersion in the via negativa of American life leads to oneness with
ecstasy.
In “Putting in a Few Appearances,” Kirpal Gordon, aware of the via negativa,experiences the spiritual with one
streetwise eye turned toward apocalypse:
At the threshold of enfleshment no one need remind us
how Dionysus got torn apart by strange desires in his wild forest den.
Nevertheless we’re putting in a few appearances
at least before it all goes up in smoke
swirling in the whirlwind called participation
mystique
shaking
down the Great Round
seeking
out the rickety rattle of bones
our rock-scissors-stone of alchemical alteration
His vision, darkly humorous, represents a
kind of playful dancing on his own grave, a reinterpretation of Kenneth Patchen’s title phrase “Hallelujah Anyway!” One could
describe Gordon’s mix of irony and mysticism as Post-Beat because of its
existing awareness of a vision’s realistic underpinnings, as well as the Beat awareness
of the visionary state itself.
In Post-Beat America, urban living involves
greater risk than in past eras. If the level of material comfort level is
significantly higher for many people, it is dangerously lower for many others.
Comfort doesn’t guarantee security. As Wallenstein’s poem indicates, continued
exposure to violence alters one’s sensibility from a Romantic-era lament for
the loss of an innocent soul to a feeling of loss tempered by a “shit happens”
resignation. Gordon’s seeking conveys a sense of knowing his quest has existed
before him, and that he’s part of an eternal replay.
Gordon’s and Russell’s work reflect the use
of the poetic line as a visual entity, employing “composition by field,” a tool
used by a number of Beats, as well as Charles Olson and his Black Mountain
colleagues, to enhance the meaning of language by placing words in a specific
location on the page instead of running them from left margin to right.
Although a number of Post-Beats employ
composition by field, many also adhere to left-margin writing, an indication of
Bukowski’s influence. The following poem, which I
wrote, reflects the left-margin style of Bukowski and
offers a sample of the kind of subject matter found in the work of his
Post-Beat successors:
The Sex Queen Of The
"coulda been
Little Miss Rich Bitch layin' on my yacht"
but claimed her father left
his inheritance behind
when the Mob's hitmen climbed
his trail. So,
she's the doe-eyed darling of the clipjoints
on the Strip. She flashes
her tits for tips from bikers
& lonely old men
in glasses
steamed with dreams of what never was.
Her nectarine nipples
tease me, her buns swing the breeze
that sucks up my buck
on her wake
of chestnut hair. She feeds my fantasies
the way I feed her lost
wealth---what I can afford to give.
But she still lives bitter,
broke, strung out
on coke in neon turnpike motels
& runs out on the rent.
While I listen to her story
to escape from my own
she pays back
the memories of her father.
The language of the poem reflects the
environment it portrays. It’s Beat in the sense of “beaten down” instead of
“beatific.” The poem also reflects the resignation that one encounters more
frequently in Post-Beat writing than in Beat writing. The beatific visions of
the 1950s that led to the optimism of the 1960s have become devalued currency
in today’s American social economy.
Yet the Post-Beats aren’t devoid of hope.
Their experience of a failed cultural revolution and the emergence of an
oppressive political administration has tempered their
questing sensibilities, but hasn’t stopped them. The Post-Beats’ use of
language represents a form of questing in itself. In the following passage from
his poem “Double Vision,” Schuyler Hoffman splashes words on the page in a
manner reminiscent of Jackson Pollock:
SEE
DOUBLE RED BLUE IN THE LIGHT OF ANOTHER YELLOW GREEN REFLECTION
ROCK PAPER SCISSORS
BLUE RED
LOST WORLD
PARALLEL LINES THE BALL BOUNCES BACK AND FORTH
LOOK AT THE MOON
PURPLE CAROM VIOLET BLUE THE WAVELETS OFF THE WALL
TWO FIGURES RUN ACROSS A FIELD
CLEAR GREEN YELLOW OUTLINE GOLD SHARP SHARD
ONE IS THE SHADOW OF THE OTHER
EVERYDAY OCHRE BROWN RUSSET AS DEFINED
A HAWK SWEEPS CLOSE TO EARTH
ORANGE RED BLURRY ROSE DEFORMED
STRIVES TO JOIN THE OTHER IMAGE
FUZZY MERGE PINK VIOLET CERULEAN SOFT AND COLORFUL
ROCK PAPER SCISSORS
LOOK AT THE MOON
ULTRAMARINE READ AQUA OLIVE FOREST
ROOTED
THE SIGNS THE WORDS
LOST VIRIDIAN
APPARENCIES
The words splashing the page like paint
achieve a cumulative effect as their colors overlay each other until they
create an exalted reality.
Some Post-Beat poets have extended the
Beats’ explorations of Language into the seemingly arcane realms of Language
Poetry, as evidenced by proto-Language Poet
In poem “II” of my IMPROVISATIONS series, I’ve used Jack
Kerouac’s Spontaneous Bop Prosody to explore improvisation as a tool of
composition, foregoing literal meaning for the flavor and flow of language
itself:
Octavian leaps |
across triads of former ingenuity |
& temper (dis) |
tranced, chanted, hanced
meat products of the mind |
|
mind the products of meat |
polytonal
appliances electric
songs of the co-dependent id
embittered on native roots, the soiled
assumptions grated
If Kerouac’s improvisational approach to
writing was rooted in bop and the single-note lines of Charlie Parker, my
improvisational approach has evolved toward the multi-textural layering of free
jazz, an idiom Kerouac admired but never recited with. The poem challenges the
traditional assumptions of how one should read the page. I’ve placed the words
on the page in columns so that the reader can perceive them as multiphonics, i.e., multiple notes played simultaneously on
a single instrument, or as lines of polytonal counterpoint that flow between
consonance and dissonance as they build toward an expression of glossolalic ecstasy.
The musicality of Post-Beat language finds
further expression in the fusion of poetry with jazz. Often dismissed as passe, the fusion of jazz and poetry has experienced a resurgence in recent years, in large part because of
Post-Beat poets. Although the Beats received credit for the fusion, it emerged
decades earlier, when Langston Hughes and Kenneth Rexroth performed it. Kerouac
synchronized the rhythms of the American vernacular with the rhythms of bop in
masterly fashion. Yet bop’s tightly-structured
compositions have inhibited the expression of poets who weren’t rhythmically
equipped to fuse their language with the flow of the music around them.
Post-Beat poets such as Barry Wallenstein, Steve Dalachinsky
and I have performed and recorded with members of the jazz avant-garde, whose
open-ended music allows poets to exercise more freedom in their linguistic
expression.
Although Post-Beats such as Wallenstein
pioneered reciting to the newer forms of jazz, Allen Ginsberg worked in the
same area late in his career. In spring, 1988, I released Sex Queen of the Berlin Turnpike, an
album of jazz poetry featuring several respected players in
Wallenstein, one of the few Post-Beat poets
ever published by a major publisher, ranks as one of the very best at fusing
poetry with jazz. He began reciting his poetry to jazz as a teenager in the
1950’s and continues to record and to perform with first-rate jazz musicians in
Today, a number of poets routinely perform
with bands, including Janine Pommy-Vega, Wanda
Phipps, Gabrielle Zane and Tracey Morris. Not all of them write in a Post-Beat
vein, but their fusion of music with poetry advances the tradition that began
with an earlier generation of bohemian poets and continued through the Beats to
the present day. Moreover, the Post-Beat poets haven’t restricted themselves to
working in the jazz idiom. Zane and sixties icon John Sinclair regularly read
their poetry to a rock band’s accompaniment.
Other Post-Beat poets have advanced the work
of the Beats into areas the Beats never explored. Mikhail Horowitz, for
example, doubles as a poet and stand-up comic, sometimes willfully blurring the
distinction between the two, as in his hip-hop parody of Homer’s The Odyssey. He combines the word-drunk
enthusiasm of Allen Ginsberg with the laugh-a-second humor of a latter-day Lord
Buckley. Bob Holman’s “We Are the Dinosaur,” which appears in Selected Poems of Post-Beat Poets,
employs the rhymes and rhythms of hip-hop to engage contemporary readers.
Kirpal Gordon’s poetry and prose reflect a dedicated
extension of the Beat vision. His poetry embraces the spiritual concerns of the
Beats while addressing contemporary issues such as homelessness, sometimes
using composition by field in a manner that hints at John Donne. His richly
imaginative fiction fuses the conceptual sophistication and extended realities
of Magical Realism with jazz dialect and rhythm.
Since Selected
Poems by Post-Beat Poets offers a representative range of poets,
not a comprehensive compilation, I’d like to mention one poet whose important
contributions point toward a working definition of Post-Beat. Michael
Rothenberg would have been included in the anthology if I had known his work at
the time I was preparing it. Rothenberg was a close friend of Philip Whalen. He
edited Overtime, Whalen’s
Selected Poems, and Joanne Kyger’s Selected Poems. A
longtime resident of the Bay area, he knows many of the San Francisco Beats
personally. He is one of the few poets to experiment with using the journal as
a poetic form, inspired by Ginsberg and Kyger to some
degree. His most recent books include The
Paris Journals and Unhurried
Visions.
He has performed and recorded with
musicians. He edits
In attempting to define the boundaries that
distinguish Post-Beat from Beat, I’ve attempted to draw distinctions between
the two, while recognizing that overlaps exist in many areas. Nevertheless, changing
times and changing art forms have given the Post-Beats new concepts and new
material to work with. Since the Post-Beats continue the line of underground
writing that has existed for centuries into a new era, they continue to express
the concerns of their predecessors while advancing the forms of expression
emerging in their times. Nevertheless, defining Post-Beat remains as knotty as
any attempt to challenge Wittgenstein’s statement about boundaries that haven’t
been drawn.
Although the boundaries of Post-Beat haven’t
been drawn, they appear to be expanding.
THE FUTURE OF POST-BEAT POETRY
In 1998, when Professor Wen
Chu-an of Sichuan University interviewed me on the subject of Post-Beat writers
for Contemporary Foreign Literature,
I was less than hopeful that Post-Beat writers would receive recognition for
their accomplishments, even though a number of them have compiled bodies of
work that warrant critical consideration.
Lacking the support of major publishers or
university-based literary magazines with substantial circulations and adequate
operating budgets, the Post-Beat writers have struggled in much the same way
that the Beats did before On the Road
made them visible to the American reading public.
In the 1950’s the Beats published magazines
like Yugen, Kulchur and
many others. Excerpts from Burroughs’ Naked
Lunch first appeared in Big
Table, which broke off from an academic publication because of the
controversy surrounding Burroughs’ work. In the 1960’s the term “mimeo revolution”
described the proliferation of literary magazines that occurred when photocopy
machines and other inexpensive printing devices enabled writers to publish work
that more conservative magazines would reject. Many of these publications were
Beat or early post-Beat, such as Ed Sanders’ Fuck
You/ a Magazine of the Arts and Entrails:
the Magazine of Happy Obscenity, which published writers who were
at the cutting edge of literary experimentation in the mid-1960s.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the “desktop
publishing revolution,” which coincided with the proliferation of Creative
Writing Programs in American universities, further reduced the cost of
publication, enabling writers and editors to produce professional quality books
and magazines at out-of-pocket prices. But lack of venues for sale and
distribution of the work compelled them to issue smaller print runs than the
Beats did. The smaller runs, sometimes under 100 copies, gave rise to the term
“micropress,” in comparison with the small presses of
the 1950s and1960s, many of which had the financial backing and distribution to
print runs of 1,000 or more copies.
From the 1970s to the early 1990s, a number
of print magazines throughout the world published Post-Beat writing. In
the1980s, Jef Bierkens
published Tempus Fugit, a
diverse collection of post-Beat poetry and fiction, in
An increasing number of Post-Beat writers
have turned to self-publishing because they have no other outlet for their
work. In the late 1970's, Kathy Acker, whose fiction bears
the stamp of William Burroughs, self-published several of her novels.
Grove Press re-published them and published her later work. Many contemporary
poets self-publish their own books with no hope of a university or commercial
press republishing them. Despite the stigma currently attached to
self-publishing, a roster of self-publishing authors reads like a Literary Hall
of Fame: Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Gertrude Stein and James Joyce
self-published their work at one time, or most of the time. Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Pictures
of the Gone World was a self-published work, issued under his City
Lights imprint.
The Post-Beat poets who fuse jazz and poetry
have seldom seen their recordings released on an established record label. In
the music business, however, self-producing work carries less of a stigma than
in the literary world. Since the mid- 1950s, innovative jazz musicians such as
Sun Ra have produced their own recordings. A number of them eventually achieved
recognition, even stardom, for their work. For self-producing jazz poets,
distribution remains the largest barrier to public recognition.
The problems of sales and distribution have
limited the ability of Post-Beat writers to present their work to more than a
marginal audience. Given the entrenchment of niche marketing and demographic
audience targeting, they aren’t likely to break trough the profit barrier that
blocks them from Publishers Row and the chain bookstores. In this respect, the
Beats gained an opportunity that remains inaccessible to most Post-Beats.
Despite these barriers, a source of hope
exists, one whose importance I underestimated even at the same time that I was
using it: the Internet.
The emergence of the Internet has enabled
writers from many schools to find audiences for their work. Since the
mid-1990s, electronic publishing has fostered a growing alternative literary
culture that thrives outside the world of commercial publishers and chain
bookstores. A number of Post-Beat magazines, such as Literary Kicks, Jack Magazine and
Rothenberg’s Big Bridge have
become online publishers of an encyclopedic range of Post-Beat authors and
styles. Their online magazines and chapbooks reach many more readers than a
magazine or book with a print run of 100 copies. The younger generations of
Post-Beats, who are more computer-savvy than those who came of age in the 1960s, add new magazines to the internet on what seems like
a daily basis.
Editors such as Rothenberg recognize the
importance of electronic literature as an alternative to the print outlets that
have proved inaccessible to the Post-Beats. Discussions of how to make e-books
more available and attractive to readers are taking place daily. In addition,
Post-Beat Poets working in the jazz-poetry fusion can place their recordings on
the internet through MP3 and other new recording techniques.
Electronic publishing gives the Post-Beats
their best opportunity to reach the audience that needs and craves exposure to
the independent voices that express human discontent and the quest for
spiritual advancement in the face of social and political repression. A growing
online presence might one day motivate publishers to issue print books by Post-Beat
writers.
POST-SCRIPT: A POST-BEAT METHODOLOGY
Selected Poems by Post-Beat Poets, while a printed work, owes its existence to the
Internet. In fact, it’s an example of the ways in which the internet can
advance the work of the Post-Beats and other writers working outside the
cultural and commercial mainstream.
When I met Professor Wen
Chu-an of Sichuan University at Lowell Celebrates Kerouac in Lowell,
Massachusetts, in 1997, we spoke for at least an hour, discussing his work, the
first Chinese translation of On the Road,
and my books and recordings. Staying in touch by e-mail, our continuing
discussions led to “Beneath the Underground: Post-Beat Writing in
A year after its publication, Zhang Ziqing, the editor of Contemporary
Foreign Literature, expressed an interest in publishing an anthology
of Post-Beat poetry to Wen Chu-an. Wen Chu-an suggested the idea to me and I agreed to it. I
e-mailed the best poets working in a Post-Beat vein that I knew from my own
reading, contacted other poets they recommended, and requested submissions for
the anthology. Only scratching the surface of Post-Beat writing in
Wen
[Vernon Frazer. this text is online at the author's website. See http://www.vernonfrazer.net/nfiction.html.]
FOOTNOTES
1 Madden, Andrew P. Beat Writers at
Work.
2 Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical
Investigations.
3 Powers, Ann. Bohos in