Heart Beat - My Life with Jack And Neal - Carolyn Cassady

 HEART BEAT - MY LIFE WITH JACK AND NEAL - CAROLYN CASSADY

Carolyn Cassady - wife of Neal Cassady, the Dean Moriarty of Jack Kerouac's 'On The Road' - puts her two penn'orth in on the subject of the Beats and I for one welcome it. The problem I have with Heart Beat - My Life With Jack And Neal, however, is the cover. I mean, isn't that one of the worst book covers you've seen in your life? It's almost like it was intentionally designed to put anyone off even being seen dead with this book in their hands. Look at it. I presume it was published as a tie-in for the movie of the same name starring Nick Nolte, Sissy Spacek and John Heard? A movie I've not seen, I might add, but am now determined to watch just to find out if it could possibly be as bad as it looks.

The Beats was always a bit of a boys' club but with that much homosexuality running through it, it should hardly be surprising. Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs were always rampant when it came to man-love but did Kerouac and Dean Cassady ever have 'relations'? I'm not sure, but it's obvious they were but a cigarette paper away from it. As a sort of surrogate love, in stepped Carolyn Cassady who evidently loved both her husband and Kerouac equally and so with good intentions slept with both.

Presumably ménage à trois' and polyamorous relationships have always been with us since time immemorial but to read about the one taking place between Kerouac and Neal and Carolyn Cassady in America of 1952 is heart-warming particularly because the usual depiction of Fifties America is as a decade of anti-communist, ultraconservatism.

Unfortunately, Heart Beat is slim pickings though the fact that it's written from a woman's point of view from within the inner circle of the original Beat writers lends a currency to what is revealed. Taking up a relationship with Kerouac whilst he's living at the Cassady's house is not only encouraged by her husband but fully enabled by him. Neal Cassady was quite the cuckold. The outcome, however, is complicated because everything is unspoken and whilst true feelings are on display it's obvious that Neal is the lynch-pin and both Kerouac and Carolyn bend to his mood swings.

Of possibly more interest to the keen Beat aficionado are the letters reproduced throughout the book between Allen Ginsberg, Kerouac and both the Cassadys. There's one in particular from Ginsberg to Neal and Carolyn where after receiving a copy of the completed manuscript of On The Road, Ginsberg is fuming and accusing Kerouac of self-sabotage: 'It's a holy mess,' he writes 'It's great all right but he did everything he could to fuck it up with a lot of meaningless bullshit. Page after page of surrealist free association doesn't make sense to anybody. I don't think it can be published anywhere in its present state. Why is he tempting rejection and fate? Fucking spoiled child. He done fuck up his writing money-wise and also writing-wise.'

On The Road, of course, went on to be recognized as - if not a work of genius - a work of huge importance. Ginsberg's criticism and rejection of the manuscript, however, hit Kerouac hard. So much so, in fact, that according to another letter written a little after to the Cassadys, Kerouac hinted at withdrawing from writing and even withdrawing from the world forever.

Luckily for us, Kerouac changed his mind and went on to write a series of books that came to define a generation. It's probably fair to say, even, that without Kerouac's influence the world wouldn't be quite the same culturally as it is today. Without his influence, Carolyn Cassady would certainly never have written Heart Beat, and that in itself would be a shame because if we can forget about the cover for a moment, it's actually a pretty enjoyable read.

John Serpico

Penguin Modern Poets - Gregory Corso - Lawrence Ferlinghetti - Allen Ginsberg

PENGUIN MODERN POETS –

GREGORY CORSO – LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI – ALLEN GINSBERG

Poetry used to always be published in expensive hardback books but during the 1960s and 1970s in an attempt to introduce contemporary poetry to the general reader a series of inexpensive paperbacks were published containing some thirty poems by each of three modern poets in a single volume. These were the Penguin Modern Poets and apparently the venture was an outstanding success.

There was an unlikely encounter once upon a time between Freddie Mercury and Sid Vicious where Freddie greeted Sid with a “Aha! Mr Ferocious!”, to which Sid replied “'Ello, Fred. Still trying to bring ballet to the masses are we?”

If true, this was an interesting exchange for not only Freddie's witty greeting but also for Sid's retort which was actually ambiguously multi-layered. Was Sid saying this so as to mock Freddie due to ballet being an uncool art form to try and foist upon the public, or was he implying that Freddie was on a hiding to nothing in trying to promote ballet as the general public were an ignorant bunch who would never appreciate it? Knowing Sid, it could have been either – or both. “I've met the man in the street,” as Sid is quoted as once saying “And he's a cunt.”

Poetry isn't all 'Moon in June' and chasing butterflies with nets though that's probably a not too uncommon perception. It all depends on how discerning the reader is and what they are presented with and what they discover by actively seeking or venturing out beyond the given horizons. As with anything, of course.

Penguin Books' endeavour to bring poetry to the masses was a noble one. Somebody back then obviously possessed of a love of poetry took a gamble and it paid off - and not only financially. The influence of this series is incalculable. The man on the street might well be a cunt, as Sid advised, but there is a vast number who are curious of mind and have a thirst for culture and knowledge only hindered by access and economics. Penguin Modern Poets was a solution and nothing less than a key to a kingdom.

The series is no longer available so can only nowadays be bought second-hand. Number 5, first published in 1963, features poems by Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Allen Ginsberg. The Beat poets, of course. Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg I've read before but for some reason I've not actually read a lot by Gregory Corso though I'm fully aware of who he is. 

The value in this book (and subsequently the whole series?) was instantly proven by it instigating me to read-up on and investigate Corso further. The wikipedia page on him was the obvious place to start and though badly composed, it was sufficient enough to nudge me to YouTube and various old interviews with him there along with recordings of him reciting some of his poems.

No frat boy was Corso but rather a product of deprivation and poverty, terrorised by time in jail at an early age but then also finding salvation there through encountering books by the classical poets. Another chance encounter – this time in a bar – with Allen Ginsberg led to further salvation through him becoming an integral inner circle member of the Beat poets.

That's not to single Corso out for special attention in this book, however, because none of the poets featured are any better than the other. There are no single lines to quote and no particular poems to highlight for special praise. They are all equally good.

No, on reading this book it caused something else and that was to consider the meaning of being a poet and why anyone would choose to be one? There's no money in it, that's for sure, so why bother? According to Plato, “at the touch of love everyone becomes a poet” and therein lies the answer. No-one writes a poem from a position of hate. As Che Guevara even once said: “At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.”

To be a poet and to compose a poem is in itself an act of love. It's a declaration of having love in one's heart. A declaration of love. A declaration of being alive and an inkling of being aware of what that might mean. To write even just one poem in your life is a life well spent. Whether a poem is any good or not is academic. Subjective. Every act of creativity in whatever medium is meaningful. One act leads to another to another and to another. Corso, Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, Kerouac et al begat the beatniks who begat the hippies who begat the punks along with a million other off-shoots along the way including me sat on a train writing these thoughts down.

All this from a book bought for 10p in a second-hand shop in Exmouth. It can't be bad.

John Serpico

Wholly Communion

WHOLLY COMMUNION

On the 11th of June 1965, 7000 people packed into the Royal Albert Hall in London for an evening of poetry. Hardly imaginable these days, of course: 7000 people? To hear some poems? It was, however, a pivotal event. An accidentally momentous occasion. Arguably, it was the moment when in Britain the Sixties began and British counterculture birthed.

The event was titled the International Poetry Reading and was organised by (among others) poet and film maker John Esam and artist Dan Richter. Coinciding with a visit to England by Allen Ginsberg, the idea was hatched to book for one evening the biggest venue in London so as to host him and to stage what was in effect, a Happening. So, just two weeks before the arrival of Ginsberg, the Albert Hall was booked, leaving very little time for publicity or for general organising.

The spontaneity of it all, however, acted as fuel to the rocket and within that short space not only had all the mainstream media (including, even, the bastion of the Establishment, the Times newspaper) been successfully approached and publicity garnered but a number of other internationally known poets and artists stepped up and offered their support, including Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, Michael Horovitz, and Alexander Trocchi.

Come the evening, to the surprise of everyone (not least the organisers) 7000 people turned up; this being the largest audience ever assembled to hear poetry in the country. Flowers from nearby Covent Garden market were handed out to everyone on entry by girls with painted faces, whilst inside the Hall, the robot creations of artist Bruce Lacey whirled around as a recording of William Burroughs' dry, reptile voice crackled over a pall of pot smoke.

"I don't want that sort of filth here." said the Albert Hall's manager "Would you send your teenage daughter to hear that sort of thing?" But his was the voice of culture past and Allen Ginsberg et al were the voices of the future, the audience being the forward thinkers aware of something in the air signifying the times they were a-changin'.

Wholly Communion, published shortly after the event, is a mixture of photographs of the various poets performing there along with some of the poems they recited. Such was the significance of the event, however, that to capture and convey it is no easy task though it should be said the book doesn't purport this to be its aim. Rather, it's a snapshot or rather still, a version of the event. Just as film maker Peter Whitehead describes the documentary film he made of it (which is up on YouTube) , it's an "impression of a unique evening".

Up against some stiff competition, Lawrence Ferlinghetti's poem To Fuck Is To love Again stands out but the poet that steals the show is Adrian Mitchell, in particular with his poem To Whom It May Concern.

What the International Poetry Reading at the Royal Albert Hall (and subsequently the book, Wholly Communion) teaches us is that a small number of people when they come together to act, can achieve great things. Booking the biggest venue in London for a few poets to perform at was a case of taking the bull by the horns and simply going for it. They were probably daunted and no doubt scared but their enthusiasm and belief in what they were doing carried them through - and they won.

Up until that evening in June of 1965 there were all these thousands of people in their homes and communities, all isolated and unaware of each other's existence. The Poetry Reading brought them all together under one roof and showed there were others like them and that they were not alone. Inspired by this revelation all number of activities and ventures were launched, not least the publication of what was to become a leading voice of the British counterculture, the International Times newspaper.

And then there's the power and importance of the written and spoken word. The importance of poems, songs, books, magazines and any other medium that might carry words. The primacy of the words being the key. The medium not being the message but the words within and the message and meaning that those words convey. And then the imagination, the belief, and the courage to externalise those words into real life and into living action.

                                                                                                                                                                             John Serpico

The Beat Scene - Edited by Elias Wilentz

THE BEAT SCENE - Edited by ELIAS WILENTZ

When you go to the music section of any bookshop nowadays you'll see any number of books detailing and documenting in photos the story of a plethora of bands, solo singers, musical events and scenes. It's an industry and it goes with the territory that where there are photos available there will one day be published a book of them; and long may it be so, I say, as it's a genre of books I quite enjoy.

The Internet has obviously had an effect on this once-cornered market of photo-documentary books, particularly platforms such as tumblr, which is a very good thing, I think. For all that, however, you still can't beat the physical medium of looking at photos in a book (or a magazine) as opposed to viewing them on a screen. And you never will.

Published in 1960, The Beat Scene is probably one of the first of this kind of book. Edited by Eliaz Wilentz, it documents as it says in the blurb on the back cover, 'the world of the young bohemian writers of New York's Greenwich Village'. To this end, it includes a large number of black and white photographs of all the poets of that time who whether by accident or design had picked up the mantel of 'Beatnik'. Alongside the photos there is also one poem from each of them plus essays from others describing the beat scene.

The photographs themselves capture a sense of something very fresh and exciting happening, particularly in those depicting the poets in full flow, reciting their poems to a rapt and attentive audience. All the usual suspects are here - Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky - but also a whole host of others that I'd never heard of before.

Regarding the poems themselves, two stand out: Playmates by Ted Jones, and Tentative Description of a Dinner Given to Promote the Impeachment of President Eisenhower by Lawrence Ferlinghetti; both for the simple reason of having a political edge to them. And being politicised - much to the chagrin of Jack Kerouac - was what gave the Beats an edge which without having would have left them as being just a bunch of would-be-poets writing about clouds and chasing butterflys with nets in the countryside.

The Beats, of course, begat the hippies and the hippies begat the punks; with the punks being the full-stop at the end of the exclamation mark. That's putting it very simply as there was obviously very many other factors and influences involved in the process but without the Beats there would never have been Punk and without Punk I wouldn't be the person I am today and I wouldn't be writing this and you, child, wouldn't be reading it.

As George Santayana once said: 'Those who fail to remember the past are condemned to repeat it'.

John Serpico

Howl - Allen Ginsberg

HOWL - ALLEN GINSBERG

Sitting watching the sun go down over Exmouth after reading Howl, I wondered what might have become of Allen Ginsberg had he not acquired world-wide fame as a poet? If Howl had not been picked up on and published by City Lights Books in 1956 and had it not caused such a scandal, would Ginsberg have remained working as a market researcher and kept his homosexuality a secret? Would he have followed his mother's advice to be good, to get married and to stay away from drugs? Would one of the world's greatest poems have gone undiscovered?

'I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked...' And with those words a door was shut on the 1950s and a new one opened leading to the Sixties. Not just by themselves alone, of course, but without these words and the life pursuits of Allen Ginsberg the world wouldn't be quite the same as it is today.

The Fifties bawled and the Fifties screamed, stamping its feet like a petulant child saying "No, I won't! No, I won't! (The world) is mine! It's mine!" And in a fit of temper it lashed out at Howl - at words on a page - to try and make Ginsberg's poem go away. When it failed to do so, thanks to an Amendment called 'Freedom of expression', the Fifties sloped away and sulked, gnashing it's teeth and festering resentment.

Ginsberg and his friends stepped forward and into the sunlight of a new era where they said Yes! to freedom, Yes! to love, Yes! to peace, Yes! to drugs and - just as importantly - No! to Moloch.

'Holy! Holy! Holy!... Everything is holy! everybody’s holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an angel!' And a million young people agreed whilst J Edgar Hoover and his kind said "What the fuck?" and made plans to claw back the ground they had lost by the use of guns, cheap heroin and Cointelpro.

And here we all are today. Ginsberg's dead but so is Hoover, Nixon, Reagan and a whole host of others just like them. The same fight, however, continues in a myriad of different forms. La lotta continua. It's a never-ending tug-of-war between light and dark, love and hate, peace and war; an inch gained here and a mile lost there but through it all Howl stands as a shining example of the power of words. As a shining example of the importance of words and art in matters of changing the world. As proof positive that Ginsberg was (almost, though not entirely) on the side of the angels whilst Hoover and Nixon et al were on the side of... at best you could call it repression but at worst you could call it death.

For anyone who's never read Howl, I'd advise they do so - at least twice. Then rather than appeasing the forces of the conservative Right and their remorseless quest for the subordination of the human race; grow a beard, rumple your clothes, wear sandals, play a bongo drum, start listening to jazz, become sexually immoral and up your drug intake - if that's your bag. Either way, take heart from Ginsberg's poem - and indeed his life - and be inspired.

John Serpico