Huck, whom you’ll see on Times Square, somnolent and alert, sad, sweet, dark, holy. Just out of jail. Martyred. Tortured by sidewalks, starved for sex and companionship, open to anything, ready to introduce a new world with a shrug. -Jack Kerouac (Desolation Angels) (more…)
A native Californian, Joanne Kyger became part of the San Francisco poetry world in 1957 when she left Santa Barbara where she had attended both high school and the University of California. She arrived at the height of the Howl obscenity trial, where a friend introduced her to The Place, the bar that served as headquarters for Jack Spicer and other poets of the San Francisco Renaissance. (more…)
Jazz radio on a midnight kick,
Round about Midnight.
Sitting on the bed, (more…)
Eileen was a writer and wife to Bob Kaufman (a poet from San Francisco). Bob and Eileen hooked up with Ginsberg, Corso, Kerouac, Whalen, and Snyder during times when the other beats were in San Francisco. (more…)
Gabrielle, Jack’s mother, was certainly a center in his writing and a core in his life. (more…)
For the greatest key to courage is shame and the blurfaces in the passing train see nothing out on the plain but figures of hoboes rolling out of site… (more…)
Jan was the daughter of Joan Haverty and Jack Kerouac. She spent much of her life, maybe all of it, having trouble coming to terms with the fact that her father rejected her. (more…)
Like Elise Cowen, Denise began writing poetry at an early age in life. After being published in Poetry Quarterly, at age 17, she began correspondence with people like Kenneth Rexroth, who were inspired by her writing. (more…)
See this bio at Jack.
And grim intensity–close within myself. No longer
a cloud
but flesh real as a rock. Herakles
of primordial substance and vitality… (more…)
David Meltzer was raised in Brooklyn during the war years. He performed on radio and early TV on the Horn & Hardart Children’s Hour. He was exiled to L.A. at 16, and at 17 enrolled in an ongoing academy with artists Wallace Berman, George Herms, Robert Alexander, and Cameron. David migrated to San Francisco in 1957 for higher education with peers & maestros like Jack Spicer, Robert Duncan, Joanne Kyger, Diane DiPrima, Michael McClure, Lew Welch, Philip Whalen, Jack Hirschman, and a cast of thousands all living extraordinary ordinary lives. (more…)
Born in Miami Beach, Florida in 1951, Michael Rothenberg has been an active environmentalist in the San Francisco Bay Area for the past 25 years, where he cultivates orchids and bromeliads at his nursery, Shelldance. He is a poet, songwriter, editor and co-founder of Big Bridge Press and Big Bridge, a webzine of poetry and everything else. He is also co-editor and co-founder of JACK Magazine, a literary publication that relates to, but expands beyond, the beat generation. (more…)
Edie met Jack through a mutual friend and former merchant marine buddy of Kerouac’s: Henry Cru. (more…)
I am the world crier, and this is my dangerous career…I am the one to call your bluff, and this is my climate. (more…)
You,
The hyena with polished face and bow tie, (more…)
