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r/BeatGeneration

“Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now.” --Jack Kerouac
▲ 20 r/BeatGeneration

“Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now.” --Jack Kerouac

>Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now.
--Jack Kerouac

Kerouac wrote this in a letter to Edie Parker in January 1957. He continues:

>That’s the story. That’s the message. Nobody understands it, nobody listens, they’re all running around like chickens [...] I will try to teach it but it will be in vain, s’why I’ll end up in a shack praying and being cool and singing by my woodstove making pancakes.

This appears in Selected Letters, Vol 2, edited by Ann Charters. It’s on pages 7-8.

Kerouac was indeed a gentle soul who practised kindness in pursuit of heaven on Earth but found a cold and unkind world that pushed him further into alcoholism rather than the more idealised isolation he mentions in this letter. The pressures of fame and the cruelty of a sensationalist media also severely impacted him following the release of "On the Road" in late 1957.

The photo is of Kerouac and a cat. I am unsure of the photographer but it seems to come from the Orange County Regional History Center. It seems to be taken outside his Orlando home, which is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

u/beatdom_journal — 2 days ago
▲ 33 r/BeatGeneration

"Poetry must haunt the mind." --Allen Ginsberg

This is a journal entry from 1948. It can be found in The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice (p.257).
The full context is:

>Universe as an animal, a maze of god as the one layer of forces around the cosmos. Each shift of atoms on his level changes quillions of atoms in the shaft.
There is a center to the universe perhaps. The problem of infinity has haunted me since childhood.
Haunt: means that we know the answer to what we consciously think our problem to be, but will not yet recognize or be aware of it.
I cannot write well because I cannot put my whole being into it.
Poetry must haunt the mind.

The word “haunt” is underlined in the final line.
I am not sure who took this photo. It seems to have been taken for the poster to promote the 1993 film, The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg, by Jerry Aronson.

u/beatdom_journal — 4 days ago
▲ 2 r/BeatGeneration

wrote some beat poetry while high, did i cook?

(i am deeply inspired by allen ginsberg and employed similar techniques. there is zero editing or proofreading. not taking myself too seriously with this)

the slinky snake hanging off the edge of my shirt has spoken to my military captain and he is saying he is crazy for susie. the guy was drunk a couple of times while his boyfriend screamed. then the bells seemed to hang over their tepid skulls just as mist envelops a crystal ball. but suddenly as they flew through the yesteryear's ancient summer evening the guitars had told them that my child hath been given as an offering to the antichrist. the notion wobbled my arms? but suddenly the bald heads with wings rushed to encircle my head. then the atomic barrier that made up my physical dna was slowly expanding, expansing, not staying so densely packed in clusters, but expanding. then the midnight voices screamed the name that should not have been heard by the king of the hanging grapes. but my guitar strings have thought me listless after realizing my newfound inner strength. my strawberry green wings expanded and expanded and i flew through the rapidly darkening sky. but the man who roots for you inside will never speak those secrets which you hide. the words flow around me and attack my brain, little needles of fractionalized energy pinpointing and battering at my brain, which felt like little sprinkles..... the trip which i had chosen to take has had the power to grasp me by the skin of my neck and pull, pull as hard as my nature will allow. what do i say? the gray and dusty highway which populates the region of my chest is merely a refractionalization of the light. cactus energy wiggly and lemon-smelling are the carcasses of the foul wheat that wants to touch my neck. my lower neck, the organs fall apart and their naked remains roll out towards me like some kind of native display of mud and misery. and the television lines wriggle in front of my chest and the believe they have the power to blind me. the car speeds towards me, black, lights expanding to fill my vision, and i am ran over like the dog i believed my brother to be.

i am released.

reddit.com
u/Will_Intrepid — 14 days ago