WHAT IS BEAT​

Following War II, a new period of post-war social complexity overtook America. It was during this turbulent, often repressive Cold War time that Jack Kerouac coined the phrase, "beat" and gave birth to a new literary movement. This film follows the activities of this new breed of writer: Kerouac, Cassady, Ginsburg, and a handful of outsiders who became known as the "Beat Generation."

https://www.youtube.com/watchv=9uVgbnwKzB4&list=RD9uVgbnwKzB4&startradio=1&t=75

 

USA Beat Poet Laureate for San Diego Chris Vannoy talks about Beat (Here)
 

USA Beat Poet Laureate for Kentucky Ron Whitehead - a poet with a mission (Here)
 

"...Ron Whitehead is a real visionary!" Lawrence Ferlinghetti, world-renowned poet and publisher and Poet Laureate of San Francisco. "Ron Whitehead is a prophet. He is one of the world's greatest poets. What an inspiring honor to hear him read here at Granada Nicaragua's International Poetry Festival." Yevgeny Yevteshenko, legendary Russian poet. "Ron Whitehead was the hero of our Granada Nicaragua International Poetry Festival." Blanca Castellon, poet and Vice-President of Granada's Annual International Poetry Festival. "I have long admired Ron Whitehead. He is crazy as nine loons. And his poetry is a dazzling mix of folk wisdom and pure mathematics." Hunter S. Thompson "Of all America's living poets - and I mean all of them, even the academic ones - Ron Whitehead has the STRONGEST most PERSISTENT most POWERFUL VOICE of them all. 

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USA Beat Poet Laureate for Ohio John Burroughs: Beat Generation Wikipedia page says: "The central elements of Beat culture are the rejection of standard narrative values, making a spiritual quest, the exploration of American and Eastern religions, the rejection of materialism, explicit portrayals of the human condition, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation and exploration."

Ho ho ho. Let's not get carried away here. Freedom was yesterday in this country. Its value has been discounted. The only freedom we truly crave today is freedom from Dumbness. Nothing else matters.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century

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USA Beat Poet Laureate for Colorado Annie Jane Wilder: Beat? it basically just means to me experience-based non-academic writing. The academics have most all to themselves so I say anything not connected to academics that is based on life is beat. 

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