Typewriter Tea

3 months ago

A woman from the audience asks: ‘Why were there so few women among the Beat writers?’ and [Gregory] Corso, suddenly utterly serious, leans forward and says: “There were women, they were there, I knew them, their families put them in institutions, they were given electric shock. In the ’50s if you were male you could be a rebel, but if you were female your families had you locked up. »Stephen Scobie, on the Naropa Institute’s 1994 tribute to Allen Ginsberg (via fuckyeahbeatniks)

via latkemonster

2 years ago

Spirit
is Life
It flows thru
the death of me
endlessly
like a river
unafraid
of becoming
the sea »

Gregory Corso’s self-written epitaph

(via thosewedontspeakof)

via fuckyeahbeatniks

2 years ago

I came out of the wilderness and just naturally fell in with the Beat scene, the bohemian, Be Bop crowd, it was all pretty much connected. It was Jack Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso, Ferlinghetti … I got in at the tail end of that and it was magic … it had just as big an impact on me as Elvis Presley. »

Bob Dylan, 1985

(via woodysblues)

via fuckyeahbeatniks

2 years ago

San Fran, hipster land,
Jazz sounds, wig sounds,
Earthquake sounds, others,
Allen on Chestnut Street,
Giving poetry to squares,
Corso on knees, pleading,
God eyes.
Rexroth, Ferlinghetti,
Swinging, in cellars,
Kerouac at Locke’s,Writing Neil
On high typewriter,
Neil, booting a choo-choo,
On zigzag tracks.
Now, many cats
Falling in,
New York cats,
Monterey scene cooler,
San Franers, falling down.
Canneries closing.
Sardines splitting
For Mexico. »

West Coast Sounds - 1956, Bob Kaufman