WALT WHITMAN: THE FIRST AMERICAN PUNK POET?
The enduring image of Walt Whitman is as a bearded old sage living out his years in...
Poetry
RAYMOND CHANDLER: THE PRIVATE EYE AS L.A. POET
Los Angeles may have found her Virgil in an Anglo-Irish-American detective novelist named Raymond Chandler (1888-1959). The character...
KENNETH FEARING: NYC’S ORIGINAL ‘DRUNKEN POET’
Kenneth Fearing, “the drunken poet,” was a rising star among the Greenwich Village bohos in the 1920s, his...
TED JOANS: GOING FAR BEYOND ‘RENT-A-BEATNIK”
Poet, musician, artist and avowed “surrealist” Ted Joans was, along with LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka), one of...
VLADIMIR VYSOTSKY: HAMLET WITH A GUITAR
Alternately ignored and vilified by the Soviet authorities during his short lifetime, singer, actor, poet and drunkard Vladimir...
JEAN COCTEAU: THE POET AS PROPHET
Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) was the original boundary pusher. No creative urge was safe from his efforts. He was...
JACK KEROUAC: BASKING IN THE GOLDEN ETERNITY
By the time Jack Kerouac died at 47 in 1969, he’d exiled himself from the 1960s youth culture...
DAVID HENDERSON: BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT CO-FOUNDER AND THE ‘VOODOO CHILD’
David Henderson, poet, writer and voice, knew and worked with giants like Ornette Coleman, Langston Hughes, Sun Ra,...
DIARY OF A DAMNED SOUL: THE ENDURING INFLUENCE OF ARTHUR RIMBAUD
It could be argued that the French poet Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) was the first punk. Instead of using...
GREGORY CORSO: STREET PUNK & BEAT TURNED POET & PLAYWRIGHT
Because he was often seen as a character in one of Kerouac’s writings, Gregory Corso has been given...
CHARLES BUKOWSKI’S LIFE AFTER DEATH
Charles Bukowski worked at a pace that seems almost superhuman. Although he did not turn to writing full-time...
DIANE DI PRIMA: HER LIFE AS A BEATNIK AND WOMAN
Diane di Prima (1934-2020) was a poet, artist, activist and teacher who navigated countercultural landscapes of both the...
SOME LATE WORDS: ALLEN GINSBERG
Musician and writer John Kruth met with Allen Ginsberg two months before the great poet’s death. He was...
MY OWN PRIVATE BASKETBALL DIARY: MEETING JIM CARROLL
In 1983, when Chris Epting was at Boston’s Emerson College, he produced a cable access TV series on...