Good Poetry- The Beat Women

When most people think of the beat generation and its writers, poets, and characters, the names Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs (all though he was pre and post beats), Gregory Corso, Lucien Carr, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, LeRoi Jones and of course Neal Cassady, come to mind. There were many other men, of course, whose names are not here, pounding out new forms of poetry, but what about the women? Sometimes it seems as if there are literary periods when women are completely absent from a scene, as if they were only there as caricatures, the girlfriends or the wives, but never the writers. But of course, there were women beat writers. As often happens, many of them have gone to the back shelf of history, but just because you do not become iconic it doesn’t mean you aren’t important or that you and your work does not still exist. Here are a few I like. Good poets.

Diane di Prima  

These eyes are amber, they

have no pupils, they are filled

w/a blue light (fire).

They are the eyes of gods

the eyes of insects, straying

godmen of the galaxy, metallic

wings.

Those eyes were green

are still, sea green, or green

their light

less defined. These sea-green

eyes spin dreams on the

palpable air. They are not yrs

or mine. It is as if the dead

saw thru our eyes, others for a moment

borrowed these windows, gazing.

We keep still. It is as if these windows

filled for a minute w/a different

light.

Not blue, not amber. But the curtain drawn

over our daily gaze is drawn aside.

Who are you, really. I have seen it

often enough, the naked

gaze of power. We “charge”

the other with it / the leap

into non-betrayal, a wind

w/ out sound we live in. Where

are we, really, climbing

the sides of buildings to peer in

like spiderman, at windows

not our own

Elise Cowen

THE LADY …

The lady is a humble thing

Made of death and water

The fashion is to dress it plain

And use the mind for border

Joyce Johnson-(about the death of Elise Cowen)

Elise

got on the Greyhound bus.

Having sabotaged

a few clocks

in the city–

she left me the rest,

and a destiny

of endless chop suey

a beat-up copy of The Idiot

She didn’t own much.

When the electrical doors closed

and the air conditioning began,

the black leather roads

took her.

Her friends

celebrate her departure

with beer and a fist fight.

Her parents

in their impenetrable living room

have drawn the blinds.

Hettie Jones

SONNET

Love never held my hand

like those summertime couples

palm to palm, the perfectly

interlaced fingers

the pressures

Love never flung himself

around my shoulder, or

measured my waist

love was a grandmaster though,

and he laughed when he came on

like gangbusters, who

could refuse him, ah.

I knuckled under, no regrets

but I’ve always wondered

Joanna McClure    

COLLAGE

Quiet the tension

Pauses of interwoven silence

Smells, textures, buds

Tastes, textures, touches

Braid in with surprises

.      .       .

Each new discovery as

Slow and quiet as a

Possum’s front feet.

Hear are some other women beat writers: Mary Fabilli, Barbara Guest, Joanne Kyger, Denise Levertov, Janine Pommy Vega, Ruth Weiss, Mary Norbert Körte, Brenda Frazer, Lenore Kandel.

And if your interested in some bedside table reading: Woman of the Beat Generation.