Beat Poets

Beat Poets refers to a literary cluster of poets and writers who achieved notoriety during the years after World War II through the early 1960s. The literary movement, which also included novelists and essayists, was located primarily in New York City and San Francisco. Writers now accepted as central parts of the American canon were then thought of both by the mainstream literary establishment and themselves as fringe writers. The loose affiliation of writers included Alan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, and William Burroughs in New York City, who merged with the San Francisco Renaissance poets Kenneth Rexroth, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, Gary Snyder, and Philip Whalen. Although the group is now known primarily for its writers, others were not primarily writers: Neil Cassady, the ultimate Beat figure and the model for Kerouac's protagonist in On the Road; Herbert Huncke, the New York City street hustler; Carolyn Cassady, one of Neil's wives, who offered her perspective on the Beats.

The term beat was originally used by jazz musicians and New York City street hustlers to describe something [Page 224]that was worn down, tired, or poor. An old, threadbare jacket with holes was beat. By the time this word reached the group of men gathering around Alan Ginsberg and William Burroughs, it suggested to Jack Kerouac a special spirituality. For Kerouac, the son of a strong Catholic mother, beat alluded to the beatitudes and being beatific. Shortly after this, Kerouac used the phrase to define his generation in a late-night conversation with another writer friend, John Clellon Holmes.

The term was then officially launched by Holmes in November 1952. Based on his conversations with Kerouac and his observations of Ginsberg, Neil Cassady, and Kerouac, Holmes had written a novel titled Go (one of Cassady's catchphrases). That November, he also wrote an article, “This Is the Beat Generation,” for the Sunday Times. His novel and article began to raise public interest about the Beats and their mission.

The group of East Coast writers and thinkers were trying to articulate what they called a new vision of art that was more organic and less rule-bound. At the heart of their search was the belief that an alternative consciousness laid behind or beyond our everyday consciousness and that it could be reached through literature. This quest inspired them to push the boundaries in both social and literary realms.

On the social side, many of the early group considered themselves outcasts and, as such, had greater freedom to move beyond society's rules. They experimented with drugs, in particular heroin; occasionally stole money for drugs or forged prescriptions; and did not keep steady jobs. In addition, the homosexuality and sexual freedom of many of the Beats further shocked conservative America.

On the literary side, the East Coast Beats experimented with the forms and rules of literature, freeing both prose and poetry from conventions in favor of more personal and spontaneous methods of creating. They consciously styled their writing on jazz artists, including Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. These influences, in turn, gave birth to wildly experimental poems and novels, such as Ginsberg's “Howl,” Kerouac's On the Road, and Burroughs's Naked Lunch.

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