The Beat Poets: Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso and di Prima

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  • Week 1
     October 4, 2021
     10:00 am - 12:00 pm
  • Week 2
     October 11, 2021
     10:00 am - 12:00 pm
  • Week 3
     October 18, 2021
     10:00 am - 12:00 pm
  • Week 4
     October 25, 2021
     10:00 am - 12:00 pm
  • Week 5
     November 1, 2021
     10:00 am - 12:00 pm
  • Week 6
     November 8, 2021
     10:00 am - 12:00 pm

Leader:  Don Melander

Mondays |  October 4 – November 8 | 10 AM – Noon

Those of us who were coming of age in the 1950s may remember reading Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road, perhaps some of his other novels, and his book of poems Mexico City Blues. Don Allen’s anthology The New American Poetry 1945-1960, which we have been using in the seminar on modern American poets, includes 12 poems from Kerouac’s book.  Other poems from the anthology that are included for discussion are a half dozen of Gregory Corso’s poems, including his wonderful poem “Marriage,” several of Allen Ginsberg’s poems including his great poem “Howl,and a reading of his poem “America.”  Diane di Prima hadn’t published much by the time Allen was editing his anthology, but several poems from di Prima’s Earthsong: Poems 1957-1959, edited by Alan S. Marlowe, will be provided.

Don Melander is a Senior Professor of Humanities, retired, at New England College where he taught mostly literature and writing for 45 years. For the last decade he has
served as dramaturge for the Open Door Theater. He holds a Ph.D. in American Literature from Syracuse University; his dissertation is on the 20th-century American
poet, Wallace Stevens. This seminar on early 20th-century American poets is his fourteenth for LINEC.

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