"The music of Miles Davis has taught me a LOT about poetry. Listening to Miles Davis has taught me to respect the intelligence of my audience. It’s taught me to respect the silence."

John Yamrus: Say what you got to say, and get out of the way…

"Corso loved jazz music. He grew up in a milieu where a parallel search for individual freedom was going on in the jazz world."

Kirby Olson: The Beat of Silence

Kirby Olson studied poetry at Naropa Institute…

"The blues is very close to Beat writing because it does come from the depths of human feelings and experience and all of the things poor people have gone through." 

Gerald Nicosia: …

"An absolute freedom of expression, as I had learned from my great mentors, Allen and Ira Cohen that to be “beat” was really to be free (also Dylan and Joplin)"

Nina Zivancevic: Balkan Dakini

Nina Zivancevic, a prominent Serbian poet, novelist,…

"Imagine a world without paintings and books and dance, without theater and all the arts. What a barren wasteland this world would be without all this beauty. This is the stuff of life."

Robert Yarra:  Art is Essential to Life…

"Sometimes, as cultural priorities become frozen and static, we need a few antinomians to shake things up and cause change."

John Tytell: When the Angels Sing

John…

"Jack Kerouac loved the sound of music – especially JAZZ music, and Be-Bop music in particular. He would type his books, at times, listening to jazz music."

George Nicholas Koumantzelis: …

"Great poets use their voices like musicians, drawing forth humor, grief, love, desire, hate, awe. Musicians have a step up with their instrument, that’s why I think some poets like to have a musician accompany them."

Catfish McDaris: The Blues of storyteller…

"Poetry is free-form chaos brought into a modicum of control and direction.  Poetry is the explorer...I’m only the vehicle. I could be replaced by a toilet plunger."

Roxie Powell: A Primitive Poet…

"The image offers many things to do with emotions. Image offers humor, irony. It offers me a possibility to chronicle a combination of my eye and my emotion."

Jerry Schatzberg: Poetic Images…

"I go on with my life as if none of this has ever happened.  I do what I do to make my life in the present tense as simple as possible."

Gerard Malanga: Under the Muse's Spell

Poet,…

The prison of the spirit is often self-inflicted. As I say in my poem, Disorderly Conduct, "You have the right to overthrow the king, whose castle's walls your own hands built."

Frank Messina: New York Poetic…

"Passionate, Compassionate, never boring, brave and humble – these are some of the reasons that Jack Kerouac is a great man-he is alive through his writing, an eternal beat avatar to the truths contained in Every-man’s life!"

Cliff Anderson: Jack Kerouac, Beat…

"As humans, we need insights and provocative questions in so many different areas of life, including desires, fears, dreams, loss, love, physical and psychological health, ..."

Eliot Katz: Howlin Soul…

"Be confident in yourself and follow your dreams."

Bill Ectric: Tales of Brave Ulysses

Bill Ectric wants to erase the line between mysticism and science, often blending the genres of mystery, science…

"Anyone that feels they want to make art should make art."

Rosemary Marchetta: Nostalgia for an era gone by...…

"it was in Greece that I had my spiritual awakening. It was something about the light. The light and the colors..."

Helen Weaver: The Awakener

Helen Weaver was born in 1931 in Madison, Wisconsin and grew up…

"When I look into the past – All Seems to Fit into ITS RIGHT TIMING"

ruth weiss:

The Goddess of the Beat…

"The music scenes in “On The Road” are some of the best scenes in the book.  This is jazz itself, captured in prose."

Levi Asher: Literary Kicks

Levi Asher, born Marc…

"The legacy of the Beats is their words!  Their honest, beautiful words set down on paper, giving comfort and hope to many."

Stephanie Nikolopoulos: Burning Furiously Beautiful

Stephanie Nikolopoulos is…