Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

A revelatory look at how poet Allen Ginsberg transformed experiences of mental illness and madness into some of the most powerful and widely read poems of the twentieth century.Allen Ginsberg’s 1956 poem “Howl” opens with one of the most resonant phrases in modern poetry: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.” Thirty years later, Ginsberg entrusted a Columbia University medical student with materials not shared with anyone else, including psychiatric records which documented how he and his mother, Naomi Ginsberg, struggled with mental illness. In Best Minds, psychiatrist, researcher, and scholar Stevan M. Weine, M.D., who was that medical student, examines how Allen Ginsberg took his visions and psychiatric hospitalization, his mother’s devastating illness, confinement, and lobotomy, and the social upheavals of the post-war world and imaginatively transformed them. Though madness is often linked with hardship and suffering, Ginsberg’s showed how it could also lead to profound and redemptive aesthetic, spiritual, and social changes. Through his revolutionary poetry and social advocacy, Ginsberg dedicated himself to leading others toward new ways of being human and easing pain.Throughout his celebrated career Ginsberg made us feel as though we knew everything there was to know about him. However, much has been left out about his experiences growing up with a mentally ill mother, his visions, and his psychiatric hospitalization. In Best Minds, with a forty-year career studying and addressing trauma, Weine provides a groundbreaking exploration of the poet and his creative process especially in relation to madness. Best Minds examines the complex relationships between mental illness, psychiatry, trauma, poetry, and prophecy—using the access Ginsberg generously shared to offer new, lively, and indispensable insights into an American icon. Weine also provides new understandings of the paternalism, treatment failures, ethical lapses, and limitations of American psychiatry of the 1940s and 1950s.In light of these new discoveries, the challenges Ginsberg faced appear starker and his achievements, both as a poet and an advocate, are even more remarkable.

Literature and mental illness --- Mental illness in literature. --- History --- Allen Ginsberg. --- Beats (Beat Generation). --- Literature. --- Lobotomy. --- Madness. --- Mental health. --- Mental illness. --- Poetry. --- Psychiatry. --- Trauma. --- Ginsberg, Allen, --- Criticism and interpretation.

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

For Charles Olson, letters were not only a daily means of communication with friends but were at the same time a vehicle for exploratory thought. In fact, many of Olson's finest works, including Projective Verse and the Maximus Poems, were formulated as letters. Olson's letters are important to an understanding of his definition of the postmodern, and through the play of mind exhibited here we recognize him as one of the vital thinkers of the twentieth century. In this volume, edited and annotated by Ralph Maud, we see Olson at the height of his powers and also at his most human. Nearly 200 letters, selected from a known 3,000, demonstrate the wide range of Olson's interests and the depth of his concern for the future. Maud includes letters to friends and loved ones, job and grant applications, letters of recommendation, and Black Mountain College business letters, as well as correspondence illuminating Olson's poetics. As we read through the letters, which span the years from 1931, when Olson was an undergraduate, to his death in 1970, a fascinating portrait of this complex poet and thinker emerges.

Poets, American --- Olson, Charles, --- 20th century. --- aesthetics. --- albert erskine. --- allen ginsberg. --- anne bosshard. --- barbara denny. --- black mountain college. --- correspondence. --- david ignatow. --- donald sutherland. --- edward dahlberg. --- ezra pound. --- fulbright. --- guggenheim. --- john berryman. --- john finch. --- jung. --- letters. --- maximus poems. --- memoir. --- merce cunningham. --- nonfiction. --- peter anastas. --- poetics. --- postmodern. --- projective verse. --- rhodes scholarship. --- stieglitz. --- van wyck brooks. --- vincent ferrini. --- waldo frank. --- wilbert snow. --- william carlos williams.

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

"San Francisco has no single landmark by which the world may identify it," according to San Francisco in the 1930s, originally published in 1940. This would surely come as a surprise to the millions who know and love the Golden Gate Bridge or recognize the Transamerica Building's pyramid. This invaluable Depression-era guide to San Francisco relates the city's history from the vantage point of the 1930s, describing its culture and highlighting the important tourist attractions of the time. David Kipen's lively introduction revisits the city's literary heritage-from Bret Harte to Kenneth Rexroth, Jade Snow Wong, and Allen Ginsberg-as well as its most famous landmarks and historic buildings. This rich and evocative volume, resonant with portraits of neighborhoods and districts, allows us a unique opportunity to travel back in time and savor the City by the Bay as it used to be.

San Francisco (Calif.) --- San Francisco Bay Area (Calif.) --- 1930s. --- allen ginsberg. --- americana. --- bay area. --- bret harte. --- california history. --- california. --- city life. --- coast. --- famous landmarks. --- golden gate bridge. --- great depression. --- historic buildings. --- interwar period. --- jade snow wong. --- kenneth rexroth. --- nonfiction. --- politics. --- san francisco history. --- san francisco. --- transamerica building. --- travel. --- united states. --- urban. --- wpa.

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

"The Sixties." The powerful images conveyed by those two words have become an enduring part of American cultural and political history. But where did Sixties radicalism come from? Who planted the intellectual seeds that brought it into being? These questions are answered with striking clarity in Andrew Jamison and Ron Eyerman's book. The result is a combination of history and biography that vividly portrays an entire culture in transition. The authors focus on specific individuals, each of whom in his or her distinctive way carried the ideas of the 1930s into the decades after World War II, and each of whom shared in inventing a new kind of intellectual partisanship. They begin with C. Wright Mills, Hannah Arendt, and Erich Fromm and show how their work linked the "old left" of the Thirties to the "new left" of the Sixties. Lewis Mumford, Rachel Carson, and Fairfield Osborn laid the groundwork for environmental activism; Herbert Marcuse, Margaret Mead, and Leo Szilard articulated opposition to the postwar "scientific-technological state." Alternatives to mass culture were proposed by Allen Ginsberg, James Baldwin, and Mary McCarthy; and Saul Alinsky, Dorothy Day, and Martin Luther King, Jr., made politics personal. This is an unusual book, written with an intimacy that brings to life both intellect and emotion. The portraits featured here clearly demonstrate that the transforming radicalism of the Sixties grew from the legacy of an earlier generation of thinkers. With a deep awareness of the historical trends in American culture, the authors show us the continuing relevance these partisan intellectuals have for our own age. "In a time colored by 'political correctness' and the ascendancy of market liberalism, it is well to remember the partisan intellectuals of the 1950s. They took sides and dissented without becoming dogmatic. May we be able to say the same about ourselves."--from Chapter 7.

NON-CLASSIFIABLE. --- United States --- Intellectual life --- Civilization --- 20th century america political history. --- 20th century american culture. --- 20th century american history. --- allen ginsberg. --- american culture. --- american history. --- c wright mills. --- dorothy day. --- environmental activism. --- erich fromm. --- fairfield osborn. --- hannah arendt. --- herbert marcuse. --- intellectual partisanship. --- james baldwin. --- leo szilard. --- lewis mumford. --- margaret mead. --- martin luther king jr. --- mary mccarthy. --- mass culture. --- old left. --- politics. --- rachel carson. --- radicalism. --- saul alinsky. --- scientific technological state.

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Beat Studies represent a vibrant field of intellectual inquiry, and this collection examines Beat culture as deeply infused with ecological themes. Allen Ginsberg invented the term "Flower Power" and Beat texts uncover the sources of our current existential climate predicament. This is the first edited collection to place the Beat Generation in conversation with the environment. A diverse number of contributors from Asia, Europe, and North America addresses essential environmental subjects and the deep ecological vision of the Beats.

Research & information: general --- Environmental economics --- Allen Ginsberg --- Beat Generation --- poetry --- poetics --- memory --- Guy Debord --- psychogeography --- landscape --- ecocriticism --- pilgrimage --- Geoffrey Chaucer --- The Canterbury Tales --- Jack Kerouac --- On the Road --- ecopoetics --- slow travel --- vernacular --- William S. Burroughs --- Naked Lunch --- dark ecology --- consumption --- control --- Timothy Morton --- speciesism --- consumerism --- mass extinction --- climate change --- environmental humanities --- posthuman --- non-philosophy --- Beat women --- eco-criticism --- green reading --- Diane di Prima --- Anne Waldman --- Kerouac --- frontier --- ecotopia --- ecopoetry --- New York School --- New American Poetry --- reparative reading --- environment --- Black Mountain --- Queer --- Ghost of Chance --- Yage Letters --- Madagascar --- experimental film --- cyberpunk --- nature --- sound --- animals --- beat generation --- comparative literature --- white shamanism --- Beat poetry --- anthropocentric materialism --- Buddhist poetics --- biotic community