The Beat Generation!

A Generation That Changed Societies Perceptions.

The Beat Generation, also known as the beat movement, were a group of American writers who emerged in the 1950s. Among its most influential members were Gary Snyder, the radical poet Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac.

            Jack Kerouac was the acknowledged leader and spokesman for the Beat Generation. What could be loosely described as the underlying philosophy was visionary enlightenment, Zen Buddhism, Amerindian culture. The Beat Generation rejected the prevailing academic attitude to poetry, feeling that poetry should be brought to the people, including the world of art. The Beat Generation has many interesting facets. With all its merits, affectations, and publicity, many good things were happening. People were talking about a poetry renaissance, and the literary world is getting a little shaken in its criteria. It is no longer rare for a young writer to be published or heard in public, and that is precisely the point: "from here on, not only will the men be separated from the boys, but the poets will have to be separated from the entertainers." Allen Ginsberg was good at both.

"Nobody knows whether we were catalysts or invented something, or just the froth riding on a wave of its own. We were all three, I suppose."  Allen Ginsberg