The 2015 International Beat Poetry Festival was a gas!

As much as I had looked forward to the festival, it turned out to be even more fun than I imagined... why? Because as I sat and listened to the Beat poems I learned something. About rhythm. About delivery. About structure. For a long time I have been trying to clarify in my head WHAT makes a poem BEAT. And I discovered that it's not so much the content as it is the attitude. Some truly truly great things happened at the center that day... here's a sample....

 

To a New Beat

Keith Tornheim

Government of the people, by the people, for the people

did not perish―

it was just bought out.

So now it is just for some of the people

…maybe more than that one percent.

What opens some doors

closes some ears.

So if you want to be heard,

you may have to howl.

What Poets Do

Lawrence Kessenich

I can walk along the river

with ear buds jammed into my ears

but if I want to be a poet

I must listen to the mating calls

of red winged blackbirds, the scuffle

of mammals in the underbrush,

the silent movement of green waters.

I can drive through the city

in my air-conditioned car, windows rolled

up tight, but if I want to be a poet

I must feel the oven breezes on my face,

the thump of rap from passing cars,

observe lines of sweat sliding down

the cleavages of luscious men and women.

I can watch television, feeding on

pabulum, but if I want to be a poet

I must dig into the complexities

of Rilke, Shakespeare, Dickinson, listen

to street musicians wail the blues,

learn from dancers and soccer players,

whose grace trumps brute strength.

I can go out on a date with anyone

who comes along, but if I want to be

a poet, I must fall madly in love,

pick daisies from a dusty field and thrust them

into my beloved’s hands. And when love

dies, part of me must die, too, shriveling

like a plum on a Tuscan tree.

Last Night at the Holiday Inn

Brad Rose

The rain patters on the roof, like soft applause. I’m listening, closely. Very closely. Constant acceleration. You can hear the sky, swarming, shivering. Listen. Low altitude velocity. Before I know it, it’s just like fun. But harder to enjoy. In the next room, I hear laughter, like a little boat, bobbing. Just laughter. And at the end of my bed, my suitcase, small as a monosyllable. I’m visiting. Only visiting. I can’t stay. Really, I can’t. Goedel’s incompleteness theorem. Always something missing. The letter J is not in the periodic table. What am I waiting for? Something tells me, it could get ugly. Something tells me shut up and concentrate. Something keeps telling me. Everything is ticking, the wallpaper, the air conditioner, the rain. Sharp, bright, ticking. I’m listening. It ticks faster. Nine bullets. By the time you read this, everything will be different. Nine Bullets. What am I waiting for? Faster. No, faster. Everything will be different.

They’re Reading My Mind Again

Brad Rose

I feel it when I’m asleep. Sometimes when I’m awake, too. Those damn magnetic fields. My girlfriend, Raylene, says I should relax. I tell her it’s hard to relax when you’re in Demolition. It makes you jumpy. Especially when you’re on the thirteenth floor. Raylene says that when I get back on my feet I should try out for the Devil’s stunt team. Says I’m a natural for the Devil’s stunt team. Besides, she says, they’ve got the best uniforms and you never have to pay for your time at the shooting range. I’ll probably have to have plastic surgery first–maybe change my finger prints, too. But I’ve been practicing. Practicing painting pictures of lava. Mostly red and orange, with a little black here and there. I’m pretty good, even if it’s hard to get the volcanoes just right. You’d think that would be the easy part? What are volcanoes, anyway? Just exploding mountains. No big deal. But when the volcano painting isn’t going too good, I like to get in the car and go for a drive. Doesn’t matter where I go. Sometimes, I drive all night. Roll the windows down, listen to the wind. It sounds like nails hissing through wood. Have you ever noticed that? Maybe that’s just me?  I don’t know. I like to drive out into the desert, way past Pahrump; watch the sun come up. Did you know there’s no word for ‘smile’ in Latin? I read that in a book, once. Those poor Romans. At least they had swimming pools. The trouble with the desert is that it’s running out of easy-to-kill prey. They say the planet is getting warmer, and it’s affecting the wildlife. I love wildlife. They’re not really that different from you and me. Not really. The snakes and the bugs, they just live their lives. Just do snake and bug things. They even sleep at night. Hey, I hope nothing terrible happens. That would be a shame. The snakes and the bugs. Coyotes too. All gone. They’re just like us. They don’t like heat. Not really. Not even in the desert. The snakes and bugs and coyotes. At least there aren’t any volcanoes. Not yet. But you never know. I might drive out there one day, and there’ll be nothing but lava; the wildlife all burnt-up. You never know for sure. They say everything is getting hotter. With all this damn radiation, there’s no telling. But don’t worry. Not about the coyotes, anyway. Coyotes are smart. They’ve got brains. Not like bugs and snakes. They think like us. At night, you can read their minds; you can tell what they’re thinking. Sometimes even before they’re thinking it. If anything happens to the coyotes, I’ll let you know. Ditto, the volcanoes.

1971

Richard Fox

When Allen Ginsberg visited Webster College

supplicants filled the Loretto-Hilton Theatre

the beat opened with Howl

heard many lines echoed

pausing for sips of water

he surveyed the suits the chic the freaks

offered the house his thermostat

a baritone Please Master

hippies nodded their heads

waved peace signs

he swallowed a sly smile

rumbled through America

                                                there was a VIP reception

                                                there was a VIP banquet

                                                there was a VIP apartment

                                                                                                            instead

Allen Ginsberg strolled dormitory halls

room to room he considered canvases

slid proffered poems into his pouch

kvelled over a newly fired goblet

in the kitchen he called out ingredients

assembled a macrobiotic meal

guitars sax fiddle set a meter

matched by knife to board

lotus in a circle sharing common bowls

he led chants a meditation

pulled out finger cymbals danced

shadowed by young feet

on an empty bed in someone’s room

dirty sheets stained quilt patchouli

he flopped snored the night

endured cafeteria breakfast

Allen Ginsberg rode to the airport

in a car bereft of reverse and first gears

grateful the window rolled down

  

Bullseye

Richard Fox

Joe likes his martini dry, Just dip the olive in vermouth, willya?

married ladies seeking the forbidden—initials on his calendar.

it's summer, he's at South Schroon—the lake house with listing stairs,

windows propped open by Beefeater bottles, slivers anywhere you lean.

the barn hides paint, palettes, easels, shrouded canvasses

after lunch, we drink Narragansett tall boys—

my gift, gaunt beer from the hometown.

            when we have ten empties, it's time to bowl.

            we don't have a ball but a cantaloupe is handy.

            to our eyes, it rolls straight and true.

            after a dozen frames, Joe nods at the china cabinet—

open the top left drawer, bring me my knife.

I hand him a foot long bowie knife, oiled and edged.

he tosses the cantaloupe in the air.

a flick of the wrist, it splits in two.

            My father sent me this knife when I was overseas.

            Told me to use it to kill Nazis. How the fuck was I

            going to kill Nazis with a knife at 28,000 feet?

            Throw it at a Messerschmidt? Bean an ack ack gunner?

Joe fluffs my hair, you're a real hippie, huh?

Dylan and Baez? Those two are punks. Never paid dues.

Hippies are copycats. You're all ersatz beats.

            I visit his Greenwich Village loft.

            there is a fragrance, sugary but musty

            on his clothes, in the air, on Coke bottle butts.

            he hands me Ginsberg, Levertov, Ferlinghetti, Bukowski.

            This is real poetry not that crap they teach in school.

            any book in his digs is mine.

            I choose Upton Sinclair, the man in the signed photograph.

the next July Fourth at Schroon, after a swim, he rails on flower children.

my response—beats are just watered down ‘20s Socialists.

he smiles, nods, clasps my shoulder.

after breakfast, before beer-martinis-weed,

he pulls out a pair of hand carved bows.

I grab a couple of quivers, Joe a fresh cigar.

            in front of the beach sit two targets.

            my spot is less than a stone's throw from the bullseye.

            his, across the street past the edge of the property.

on a good day, I put two arrows in the outer rings.

he always buries five in the center circle.

Mine were just for fun....

Jack Kerouac's Grave

Robin Strattton

Years ago I went to a cemetery in Lowell, Massachusetts to look for Jack Kerouac's grave with a boy who vowed to quit smoking for me. Sexy, brilliant, Hollywood hair and potting soil colored eyes. Kerouac, not the boy. The boy? He and I searched for hours and then gave up. Ah, Kerouac, who lives in my bookcase, emerging glorious when I quote everyone's favorite line from On The Road: "The only people for me are the mad ones..." who would be the first to scorn my search for his grave! He quit smoking for me. The boy, not Kerouac.

To Be Like Allen Ginsberg

Robin Stratton

I often wonder what it would be like

to be like Allen Ginsberg

Brilliant misfit

Anxious teen

Had crazy Communist mother

Liked boys

Was suspended from Columbia for writing on a dusty windowsill

     that the dean had no balls

Signed the paperwork giving the hospital permission to perform a

     frontal lobotomy on his mother

Was unwittingly involved in a burglary ring and arrested and forced  

     to spend time in a mental institute

Worked as a baggage handler at a Grayhound bus station

Wrote Howl which landed the publisher/bookseller in jail for

     seeking to “willfully and lewdly print, publish and sell obscene

     and indecent writings, papers, and books”

Was voted King of the May in Prague

Was kicked out of Prague

Formed the Committee of Poetry in an attempt to channel tax

     payer money into poetry, not the Vietnam war

Chanted Om for seven hours at the National Democratic

     Convention

Witnessed the interconnectedness of the universe

Was not interested in making a social revolution but wanted to

     propose his own soul to himself

Was “the most unharried Krishna” William F. Buckley ever heard

Signed a copy of his book for me two years before he died

Holy, happy Buddhist

Wrote poems that were lists

Some of our other readers....

 

Doug Holder

Craig Fishbane (came all the way from NYC!)

Karen Friedland

Lori Desrosiers

Yvon Cormier, one of the festival's co-founders

Colin Haskins, the other co-founder, with me and AmyWoronick -

they drove up from Connecticut and their energy added so much to the day!

Yup.

We concluded the festival with a group reading of "I Am Waiting" by 

Lawrence Ferlinghetti... it was just phenomenal... the vibe was 

really something special !

And of course it was all captured on film by our beloved photographer,

Glenn Bowie... he's the greatest!

Here's the vid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQdg6sMfK-0

And here's the poem:

I AM WAITING

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

  

I am waiting for my case to come up

and I am waiting

for a rebirth of wonder

and I am waiting for someone

to really discover America

and wail

and I am waiting

for the discovery

of a new symbolic western frontier

and I am waiting

for the American Eagle

to really spread its wings

and straighten up and fly right

and I am waiting

for the Age of Anxiety

to drop dead

and I am waiting

for the war to be fought

which will make the world safe

for anarchy

and I am waiting

for the final withering away

of all governments

and I am perpetually awaiting

a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Second Coming

and I am waiting

for a religious revival

to sweep thru the state of Arizona

and I am waiting

for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored

and I am waiting

for them to prove

that God is really American

  

and I am waiting

to see God on television

piped onto church altars

if only they can find

the right channel

to tune in on

and I am waiting

for the Last Supper to be served again

with a strange new appetizer

and I am perpetually awaiting

a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for my number to be called

and I am waiting

for the Salvation Army to take over

and I am waiting

for the meek to be blessed

and inherit the earth

without taxes

and I am waiting

for forests and animals

to reclaim the earth as theirs

and I am waiting

for a way to be devised

to destroy all nationalisms

without killing anybody

and I am waiting

for linnets and planets to fall like rain

and I am waiting for lovers and weepers

to lie down together again

in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed

and I am anxiously waiting

for the secret of eternal life to be discovered

by an obscure general practitioner

and I am waiting

for the storms of life

to be over

and I am waiting

to set sail for happiness

and I am waiting

for a reconstructed Mayflower

to reach America

with its picture story and tv rights

sold in advance to the natives

and I am waiting

for the lost music to sound again

in the Lost Continent

in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the day

that maketh all things clear

and I am awaiting retribution

for what America did

to Tom Sawyer

and I am waiting

for Alice in Wonderland

to retransmit to me

her total dream of innocence

and I am waiting

for Child Roland to come

to the final darkest tower

and I am waiting

for Aphrodite

to grow live arms

at a final disarmament conference

in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting

to get some intimations

of immortality

by recollecting my early childhood

and I am waiting

for the green mornings to come again

youth’s dumb green fields come back again

and I am waiting

for some strains of unpremeditated art

to shake my typewriter

and I am waiting to write

the great indelible poem

and I am waiting

for the last long careless rapture

and I am perpetually waiting

for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn

to catch each other up at last

and embrace

and I am awaiting

perpetually and forever

a renaissance of wonder

 SEE YOU ALL NEXT YEAR!