The Latter-Day Beats

The Latter-Day Beats are the writers who carried the legacy of the original Beat writers of the 50's, particularly Kerouac and Ginsberg, into the 1960's and beyond. There were countless Beat Pretenders and wide-eyed followers (like the callow proto-hippie poet who annoys the Kerouac character so badly in 'Big Sur'), but there were also many who discovered voices of their own, or took Beatness as a starting point and ended up in places completely of their own invention.

Many of the pages in Literary Kicks are about the "original" Beats -- the group of struggling writers who befriended each other around Columbia University, Greenwich Village, San Francisco and Berkeley before they began to achieve worldwide fame between the years 1955 (the seminal Six Gallery reading) and 1957 (the publication of 'On The Road'). I've got my hands full just covering these writers, so I'd like to rely on external links as much as possible with the writers on this page, which is and probably always will be a work in progress.

Ed Sanders

Here's a page and a list of works, here's an interview that originally appeared in BEAT SCENE, and here are reviews by Dan Barth of a couple of Sanders' books, 'Hymn to the Rebel Cafe,' and 'Tales of Beatnik Glory.'

Richard Brautigan

I love this guy and wish I had the time to create a whole web site about him. But till then ... here's an excellent and comprehensive Brautigan web site.

Robert Creeley

The Black Mountain Poets deserve a good web study of their own, and I hope somebody creates one. Here, from the University where he now teaches, is a page on Creeley.

d. a. levy

I hadn't known much about this interesting person until Luther Jett sent me these pages.

Ken Kesey

I have a page on him here and I'm also happy to present for the first time an impressive new Kesey Bibliography sent to me by Marty Blank.

Charles Bukowski

Check out this excellent mini-website created specially for Literary Kicks by Michael McCullough.

Anne Waldman

I already have a page on her here.

Diane DiPrima

Marcus Williamson sent me this page.

Ted Joans

Sean Daniel Singer wrote this page -- thanks Sean.

Bob Kaufman

Sean wrote this page too.

Jack Micheline

Thanks to Fredde for this interesting material on Micheline.

Ted Berrigan

Here's Buddha On The Bounty, a nice Ted Berrigan page created by Katie Mulcrone.

David Amram

More of a musician than a writer, but he's been showing up at a lot of Beat readings and events lately, and his performances are well worth catching. Here's his page.

Frank O'Hara

This page is just one little corner of R.H. Albright's intriguing work-in-progress web universe.

Terry Southern

I have a brief page on him, or you can just go right to terrysouthern.com.

Kenneth Patchen

Another one by Marcus Williamson.

Jim Carroll

Here's Cassie Carter's obsessively adoring Jim site.

Richard Hell

Here's Hell in his own words.

Charles Plymell

Here's an excellent site on this still-very-current writer.

Sinclair Beiles

Yes, there is actually a South African Beat poet.

Lord Buckley

The classification of "writer" doesn't really capture this unusual performer, but here's a good site dedicated to him.

Janine Pommy Vega

Coming soon.

Hunter S. Thompson

Soon.

Ray Bremser

Soon.

Tuli Kupferburg

Also soon.

Richard Farina

Shit, I better get busy.

Who else should be on this list? And does anybody want to volunteer to cover one of these writers?

Check back with me here soon for more!

Literary Kicks
by Levi Asher