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Chapter 36 - San Francisco and the Beats

from Part IV - Beyond Modernism: American Poetry, 1950–2000

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2014

By
Stephen Fredman
Edited by
Alfred Bendixen  and
Stephen Burt
Alfred Bendixen
Affiliation:
Princeton University, New Jersey
Stephen Burt
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
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Summary

In the 1950s San Francisco acquired a reputation, which it has since maintained, as a mecca for poetry. In the popular imagination, San Francisco poetry is synonymous with the beat Movement, which first rose to prominence there. This chapter presents the salient features of milieu and then discusses what have been seen as the two strains within it, the spontaneous and the hermetic. Making a virtue of eschewing fame, the hermetic wing turned inward, viewing the scene of writing as akin to magic, in which spirits might direct the making of poetry, and addressing the poem principally to a group of like-minded initiates. In addition to spiritualistic composition and a penchant for occult sources, such as the Grail myth or the tarot deck, there are two other strikingly hermetic qualities to Spicer's oeuvre. The other hermetic aspect of Spicer's poetry involves his relationship to language.

Keywords

American poetryCharles ReznikofGeorge OppenLouis ZukofskyCarl RakosiObjectivist poetrysocial activism
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of American Poetry , pp. 823 - 843
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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