Beat Poets

Foreword

RAY BREMSER (1934–98)
From Poems of Madness (“City Madness”)

GREGORY CORSO (1930–2001)
Hello
From Ode to Coit Tower
From Transformation & Escape
I Am 25
Poets Hitchhiking on the Highway
Away One Year
After Reading “In the Clearing”
Writ on the Eve of My 32nd Birthday
Second Night in N.Y.C. After 3 Years

ELISE COWEN (1933–62)
“Trust yourself—but not too far”

ROBERT CREELEY (1926– )
Chasing the Bird
The Dishonest Mailmen
I Know a Man
The End
The Hill
The Rain
For Love

DIANE di PRIMA (1934– )
Revolutionary Letter #1
Poem in Praise of My Husband (Taos)
The Quarrel
April Fool Birthday Poem for Grandpa
Poetics

LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI (1919– )
#9 (“Truth is not the secret of a few”)
#13 (“It was a face which darkness could kill”)
#22 (“crazy to be alive in such a strange world”)
#39 (“A blockage in the bowel”’)

ALLEN GINSBERG (1926–97)
From Howl
“Back on Times Square, Dreaming of Times Square”
My Alba
Song
Malest Cornifici Tuo Catullo
Tears
From Kaddish
A Supermarket in California
Sunflower Sutra
From America

BARBARA GUEST (1923– )
Parachutes, My Love, Could Carry Us Higher
Sunday Evening

LEROI JONES (Amiri Baraka) (1934– )
Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note
Sex, like desire
War Poem
Political Poem

LENORE KANDEL (1932– )
Enlightenment Poem
Blues for Sister Sally
Junk/Angel

BOB KAUFMAN (1925–86)
Benediction
West Coast Sounds—1956
Fragment
Ginsberg (for Allen)
Abomunist Manifesto

JACK KEROUAC (1922–69)
Mexican Loneliness
How to Meditate
A Sudden Sketch Poem
116
Hymn
From Mexico City Blues

TULI KUPFERBERG (1923– )
“I dreamed of a bum seven foot tall”
“My muse goosed me”

JOANNE KYGER (1934– )
“It is lonely”
“My father died this spring”
May 29
“It’s a great day”

PHILIP LAMANTIA (1927– )
From Hypodermic Light
High
“Man is in pain”

DENISE LEVERTOV (1923–97)
The Gypsy’s Window
The Flight
The Marriage
The Marriage (II)
Poem from Manhattan

JOANNA McCLURE (1930– )
A Vacancy

MICHAEL McCLURE (1932– )
The Flowers of Politics (I)
The Flowers of Politics (II)
Mad Sonnet 13

DAVID MELTZER (1937– )
From the Untitled Epic Poem
6th Raga: For Bob Alexander
15th Raga: For Bela Lugosi

HAROLD NORSE (1916– )
Picasso Visits Braque
I Would Not Recommend Love
“I Have Always Liked George Gershwin More than Ernest Hemingway”
I Have Seen the Light and It Is My Mind
Hotel Nirvana

FRANK O’HARA (1926–66)
Personal Poem
Autobiographia Literaria
Today
My Heart
Avenue A
Now That I Am in Madrid and Can Think
Having a Coke With You

PETER ORLOVSKY (1933– )
Peter’s Jealous of Allen
“Writing poems is a Saintly thing”
Some One Liked Me When I Was Twelve
Collaboration: Letter to Charlie Chaplin

MARIE PONSOT (1921– )
Take My Disproportionate Desire
Matins & Lauds
Communion of Saints: The Poor Bastard Under the Bridge
Easter Saturday, NY, NY
Rockefeller the Center

GARY SNYDER (1930– )
Migration of Birds
A Sinecure for P. Whalen
Under the Skin of It
August on Sourdough, a Visit from Dick Brewer

ANNE WALDMAN (1945– )
How the Sestina (Yawn) Works
Revolution
Diaries
The Blue That Reminds Me of the Boat When She Left

LEW WELCH (1926–72)
“Whenever I make a new poem”
“I know a man’s supposed to have his hair cut short”

PHILIP WHALEN (1923– )
For C.
20:vii:58, On Which I Renounce the Notion of Social Responsibility
Prose Take-Out, Portland, 13:ix:58
Something Nice About Myself
True Confessions

JOHN WIENERS (1934– )
A Poem for Tea Heads
From A Poem for Painters
A Poem for the Insane

LETTERS, ENCOUNTERS, & STATEMENTS
ON POETICS
Donald Allen (1912– )
William Burroughs (1914–97)
Gregory Corso
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Allen Ginsberg
Jack Kerouac
Frank O’Hara
Peter Orlovsky

Acknowledgments
Index of First Lines