Beat Poetics

The Beat poetics seemed different to the other works studied on the module, in the way that they seem to exist solely as a piece of performance poetry. Though the construction exists on a page, the product seems secondary in importance to its performance. It seemed, to me, to be better viewed as a script - Beat poetry was not literature to be read or studied in private, it was a part of the oral tradition.
I always found this an interesting anachronism, a reversion back to the ballads of old which would use poetry as a form, in order to remember long stories and pass down the tales of culture. Beat poets, instead of celebrating societal mythos, used poetry as a vehicle to react against political constraints, social literary expectations of American formalism, and the structured lyric poetry of the New Critics.
However, the measure of the line is still focused on speaking and the breath, with recital being the poet's aim. George Oppen, in his Of Being Numerous called the genre 'Dithyrambic', meaning:
1. a Greek choral song or chant of vehement or wild character and of usually irregular form, originally in honor of Dionysus or Bacchus. (Greek Gods of wine, fertility, and fun times)
2. any poem or other composition having similar characteristics, as an impassioned or exalted theme or irregular form.
3. any wildly enthusiastic speech or writing. *
It is for this reason, perhaps, that Beat poetry has come to be associated with Anti-Establishment art and counter-culturism. Spontaneity was essential, as Jack Kerouac chastised Ginsberg for his overuse of editing. This isn't poetry that has been pondered over forever, but an individual's train of thought. Beat poetry is social poetry, in that the audience are as exalted as the poet. Everyone in the room is an Artist, in the sense that the poetry comes not only in speaking, but in the interaction. People could, perhaps, draw reference to Roland Barthes' The Death Of The Author in this.
As a general rule, the 'Beat Generation' (A term coined by Kerouac) rose to renown in the 1950s, with Cold War threats at their height in America, and an experimentation with drugs and 'free speech' paving the way for the subsequent 'hippie' generation, which took on some elements of the expanding Beat movement.




*(source: dictionary.com [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dithyramb] accessed 21/03/11) italicised - mine.