Junkman’s Obbligato

Let’s go
Come on
Let’s go
Empty our pockets
And disappear.

Troia – Mexican Memoirs

From upper left: Peter Orlovsky, Denise Mercedes, Julius Orlovsky, Gordon Ball, Gregory Corso, Ray Bremser, Bonnie Bremser (1971. photo: Allen De Loach)

In this newly rediscovered memoir, Bonnie Bremser, ex-wife of Beat poet Ray Bremser, chronicles her life on the run from the law in the early Sixties. When Ray fled to Mexico in 1961 to avoid imprisonment for armed robbery, a crime he claimed he did not commit, Bonnie followed with their baby daughter, Rachel.

The Julie Project

La storia di Julie Baird, una donna statunitense, fotoraccontata da Darcy Padilla.

Jazz Cat, Right on Time, Every Time

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)

Most of the notables involved in what may have been the first-ever jazz-poetry reading of the so-called Beat Generation have passed on into legend. Of those presenting at that event, at the Brata Art Gallery on East 10th Street in Manhattan in October 1957, the sole survivor is the “jazz” cat David Amram, a French horn virtuoso, multi-instrumentalist, and composer.

A Dirty Old Man

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994)

After toiling in obscurity for years, Charles Bukowski found fame in 1967 with his autobiographical newspaper column, “Notes of a Dirty Old Man,” and a book of that name in 1969. He continued writing this column, from its inception in Open City to its conclusion in High Times, through the mid-1980s. More Notes of a Dirty Old Man gathers many uncollected gems from the column’s 20-year run.

4,000 Miles

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)

di Jerry Cimino per l’Huffington Post

Francis Ford Coppola has owned the movie rights to Jack Kerouac’s seminal novel On The Road for decades. And frankly most of us who love the book and Kerouac’s legacy and have been discussing the possibility of a movie for years took great solace from the fact that the movie was in the caring hands of Francis Coppola. He just seemed to be the kind of guy who would either make the movie “right” or he wouldn’t make it at all.

Swinging in the Shadows

The Untold Story of the California Beat Era – Straight from the Source – Poets & Artists in Venice and San Francisco in the late 1950s – early 60s.

Il Kentucky nella bocca di Dio

San Francisco, City Lights (foto di Leopoldo Papi, 2009)

Ad appoggiare schiene fredde

sui sedili in legno del Kentucky mai visto

ci voleva abilità

e abbastanza veleno negli occhi per vedere

ciò che non era mai stato:

“Socks are very important!”

Neal e Carolyn Cassady, testo di Allen Ginsberg

scritto da John Allen Cassady

Now that principle photography has wrapped for the upcoming movie Big Sur, based on the 1961 novel by Jack Kerouac, I thought I would tell a story of my own about that magical stretch of California coastline. Before I journeyed there many times through high school and beyond with my friends for countless camping trips (and “trips”), I was first introduced to “The Sur” by my father, Neal Cassady. He affectionately called it “Big Sewer,” not out of any disrespect, but he could never resist a play on words.

Compression & Purity

La copertina di "Compression & Purity"

Few poets writing today can compare with L.A.-based surrealist Will Alexander in terms of the intensity of his imagination or his radically experimental approach to language as material object. Through the use of automatic writing, Alexander practices a surrealism of the word, creating densely textured layers of signification from its sounded and written forms. Compression & Purity, volume five of our Spotlight poetry series, is Alexander’s seventh full-length collection.