
Saturdays, Mar 7 - Mar 7
10:00 am - 12:30 pm
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The Beat Generation Poetry Workshop
When bebop master Thelonius Monk encountered a piano, he was not thinking about correct notes, he was thinking about discord, intervals between whatever was expected, about breath, about breadth. This advanced workshop class will consider the last literary movement that sought and succeeded to score improvisational elements of jazz with a vernacular. From poets Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Welch, Rexroth, Corso, O’Hara, Kandel, Snyder, di Prima, Kyger, and Waldman, to Black Mountain projectives Olson, Creeley, and Duncan, we’ll discuss various techniques and motivations of a crusade built on foundations of free speech and spiritual mindfulness. Heavily focused on writing prompts, we’ll convene to assess why on earth a revised template of ideas formed in 1950s America, how these same ideas not only can be imitated in the contemporary, but deserve to be expanded upon, and made new again.