from Part I - American Poetry from 1945 to 1970
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 December 2022
This chapter introduces the Beat movement and traces its origins, its history, and its legacy. The chapter examines the Beats’ most important formal innovations, thematic concerns, historic importance, and cultural influence by focusing especially on the poet at the center of the Beats, Allen Ginsberg and his controversial groundbreaking poem “Howl” and other major works. The chapter also discusses other Beat poets, including Gregory Corso and Diane Di Prima, as well as issues of gender and race in relation to the Beat movement. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the San Francisco Renaissance and focuses especially on one of the most influential poets of that movement, Jack Spicer.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.