Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Beat Generation

The beat generation is a term used to describe a group of American writers who came to prominence in the 1950s. Central elements and characteristics are:
  • rejection of mainstream values
  • experimentation with drugs and alternate forms of sexuality
  • interest in Eastern spirituality
  • spontaneity and open emotion
  • visceral engagement and gritty world experiences
  • spiritual yearning, paradoxically with grit
Authors include: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Ken Kesey.

Our Desires

There is a wind that seeks the crevice
under my heart
the way insects file at night
beneath a doorway

Its edges are rough, it slits
the cords. It trips my steady breathing.
When it comes there is no one
I can trust.

It seems, at times, I have designed
too well this vision of you.
I cannot survive your eyes
when they are scarred with a need
for some lesser form of love.

I admit to this conceit.
And though you will not accept it
You love it nonetheless

It is just like you. Our desires
will always be kept sharp
by a kind of perversity. A need
to be each forever alone…

Its color is violet, like lips
that have been smashed by nights
or robbed of blood by lack of breath.
The wind I was speaking of does this.

I can feel it now.

-Jack Kerouac

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