Homeless in SF

“if we want to transform inequalities, we cannot maintain the hierarchical stance of the neutral, detached, impartial observer.” - Lyon-Callo

In section last week we discussed gentrification pushing people out of San Francisco, and a few other people have posted about this, so I wanted to take it a step further and talk about the people already without housing in the city. I think San Francisco and beat literature and homelessness are intertwined, and I would say that Santa Cruz is connected as well. I have heard Rob mention people experiencing homelessness a few times during lecture, and also the transient lifestyle of many beat poets. I think that SF and the authors and artists there have been influenced by the large numbers of people experiencing homelessness there, and many of the artists have lost their housing, similar to what Ferlinghetti described with the rising rents of art studios. One of the clearest references to homelessness from this class that comes to mind is in the beginning of Dharma Bums, where Kerouac hops a train up the coast and shares a meal with a man experiencing homelessness, calling him a "little Saint Teresa bum" who was "the first genuine Dharma Bum I'd met (9)."I think some authors mist over the realities of homelessness, which is why I like the message of the quote up top.

 Something that caught my eye was the relationship in the sheer numbers, where SF is estimated to have over 6,400 individuals experiencing homelessness, and SC estimated 3,500, which I find striking considering SC is a much smaller city.

There is so much more to be said about this, and I definitely don't presume to know enough, so I welcome any comments you all have.

How I feel In back of the real

The poem "In back of the real" by Allen Ginsberg really struck me off guard when I first read it since I haven't been exposed to too many Ginsberg poems before. The syntax, the isolated feeling, and contrasting images all work together in a way that made me realize the beauty of the exhausted modern world. I have an attraction to this poem because I spent my teenage years growing up in south San Jose and I spent a lot of time skating and exploring downtown and the industrial areas of Silicon Valley and I never ever even stopped to think about how beautiful the city I lived in was.
Ginsberg takes notice in a small and crippled flower that "lay[s] on the hay on the asphalt highway" (6-7) and this line made me start to think that he was somewhere off of El Camino Real since the poem also has real in the title. If this is true, then Ginsberg really is an enlightened person since that highway grows nothing even remotely beautiful around it, but he is able to see that amongst all the traces of  decaying civilization. These words actually make something transcendental out of the road that I've been driving on for all of my life and now all I can think about is how sublime a mundane highway can actually be.

Alex_H

The Sunflower Sutra

For me, Sunflower Sutra is the most concise, rhythmic, and interesting at the level of language of all of Ginsberg's poems in the collection "Howl and Other Poems." I like the way Ginsberg plays with similar sounding words and extremely long breath-lines, making it fun to read, especially aloud. "The banks of the tincan banana dock"is the best phrase of the poem and it appears immediately in the first line. There are many levels of alliteration in this phrase as well as visual rhyme (tincan and banana look very similar). The poem reads almost like a beautifully crafted sonnet, with well-though-out words and luscious language, yet it also puts forth a "fuck you" to the poets who write sonically within laid-out rules or form. The stressed parts of the lines follow no pattern - there are not "stressed followed by unstressed syllables,"like a sonnet might have. Rather, Ginsberg presents huge lines that seem to be a big jumble of stressed syllables (just about every syllable in "tincan banana dock" is stressed).

This poem, to me, pushes the limits of poetry at its time, staying close to the deeply intended and well-crafted words of the past but presenting a new, formless form that constitutes an era in its own for poetry.

Stevie Nicks - a San Francisco Gypsy?

Rock singer Stevie Nicks grew up in the Bay Area, where she met Lindsey Buckingham. The two lived together for a while barely getting by, before they were eventually discovered by Mick Fleetwood and joined the band Fleetwood Mac, which almost overnight made them household names. Last November, I saw Fleetwood Mac perform (for the second time) in San Jose, where Stevie Nicks told a story about growing up near San Francisco. She explained to the 10,000 people present that before she and Lindsey hit it big, she went to a clothing store in downtown San Francisco called The Velvet Underground, a place where Janis Joplin and Grace Slick bought all of their clothing. She could only stand in the center of the store and look around, as she couldn't afford anything they were selling, but she told herself that if she ever hit it big, she would go back and buy some of their clothing, like her idols did before her. Until then, the spot she stood on the floor was hers. This story ends with Stevie saying that she did hit it big, and the band performs their song "Gypsy," which opens with the lyrics "so I'm back to The Velvet Underground, back to the floor that I love."

It was cool hearing this story, as it provided some context to one of my favorite songs. However, it contradicts other stories that Stevie has reported in interviews about the song's origins, one of which makes more sense (that it reflects her and Lindsey's early relationship and her leaving it behind). When trying to find The Velvet Underground on Google, I came up blank - there used to be a clothing store by that name in Santa Cruz, but it has gone out of business. While I don't doubt that the store existed (or even exists), there is a mysticism to this story that exaggerates it, and likely could be done to glorify both the city and the rock artists that Stevie wants to emulate.

The reason I think this ties into our class is that it reminds me of Janis Joplin's "Mercedes Benz," a song that sarcastically prays for material possessions in order to better one's social appearance. Stevie's story, and thus song, about the Velvet Underground removes the sarcasm but keeps the commodity that Janis sings about, turning San Francisco into a place where, if you have the money, you can turn yourself into one of your idols. It reflects and glorifies the beat and hippie image of Janis Joplin while also portraying the materiality and commercialism that said image fights against, and is if nothing else fascinating to me.
What are your thoughts on the matter? Do you think Stevie Nicks' "Gypsy" reflects the wide range of topics we have discussed in class so far, or am I just grasping at straws? Regardless of the message, it's hard for me to not love this band and all of their music.

Gentrification and Soccer Games

This week, we spoke about the gentrification of San Francisco by invading businesses and their employees (namely, folks from Silicon Valley and Silicon Valley businesses.)  I remembered a story I'd seen a few months ago that directly touched The Mission, where dwindling attention to public parks and play areas is allowing tech newcomers to take over.  Every weekend, neighborhood kids would go to the local soccer field, winning the rights to the field by forming teams and playing each other.  During a weekend last October, a group of tech guys from Dropbox tried to take the field without playing for the right to it, saying they "bought the timeslot."  (That article is here.)

For obvious reasons, people were pissed; locals called for a ban on buying the rights to public spaces, and made plans for a big protest against the clear gentrification of the poorer areas of San Francisco at the expensive of locals (that article is here.)  I can't find the outcome of the story, but hopefully the parks department stopped charging money for public space, which is probably illegal. (Update: The video description says the policy of buying timeslots for the public soccer field was ended after the below video went viral.)

The video of the encounter between the local soccer players and the adult techies is posted below.  In the end, I'm left wondering exactly how terrible the adults were at soccer; after all, the opposing team were teens, and the techies could have just…you know…actually played for the field, like everyone else…

La Vie Boheme

"Compassion, to fashion, to passion when it's new/ To Sontag/ To Sondheim/ To anything taboo

Ginsberg, Dylan, Cunningham and Cage/ Lenny Bruce/ Langston Hughes"

For those of you who have not had the pleasure of seeing the musical RENT, in the song "La Vie Boheme", the above are people listed in the song La Vie Boheme as people who inspire the Bohemianism. A song dedicated to expression, freedom, and art.

This is not the only reference to beat poets in newer media. Even the Gilmore Girls had casually placed argument between teenagers about whether the beat writers inspired "ordinary" people to see things from a different point of view, or if they were simply drunk, lazy, petty thieves. (Fun fact: a copy of "Howl and Other Poems" is the first book Jess borrows from Rory.)

From Sontag to Hughes, these men seem only to be connected in La Vie Boheme because they make music or write poetry or are novelists; perhaps, those who were able to capture "passion when it's new." The connections between Ginsberg and Dylan have been explained to us a thousand times, but what I am going to attempt is proving to you why Sondheim and Ginsberg should be mentioned together a lot more frequently.

I'm not arguing that these two would have been best friends forever– they'd probably hate each other– but a lot of their thoughts on writing are eerily similar, a poet and a composer speaking through the years to each other. To Ginsberg's “Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness", Sondheim agrees "The worst thing you can do is censor yourself as the pencil hits the paper. You must not edit until you get it all on paper." They both believe in the power of art to change people and society, especially when it comes to poetry and music.

Ginsberg wrote about the madness of his generation, that poetry was the only way "people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private," argued that every person had flowers of poetry inside of them, thoughts rolling around their heads, and holiness and desire in their hearts. Sondheim once said "The dumbing down of the country reflects itself on Broadway. The shows get dumber, and the public gets used to them"– in the same way Ginsberg was upset that America takes people and turns them into workers and slaves to the idea of an "American dream", Sondheim is upset that America makes people out as not being able to understand things and that art is being changed to be simple and is making people think simpler in response.

At the heart of both these men is passion, and a desire for other people to follow the passion inside themselves as well.

Gentrification and Transportation

During section this morning (4/22), we talked a lot about gentrification in the Bay Area, namely San Francisco and Santa Cruz, the causes, and the effects on the respective communities. We mentioned briefly this article, titled "All aboard San Francisco's hipster bus for leather seats, Wi-Fi and iced coffee." To be completely honest, I was tight-lipped about the article's content because I was planning on making this blog post and did not want to run out of things to say on this post.
The content of the article is the new private bus system serving 4 stops in the Marina district to 4 stops in the center of the Business district of San Francisco called "Leap." So, the first question is: how much for a ride on this leather-clad, Wi-Fi quipped, shuttle? $6, compared to the $2.25 for public Muni buses. Riders of Leap complain that Muni buses are "Muni buses are crowded and dirty" and, rather than make any sort of effort to improve existing public transit options in the city, prefer to pay almost three times as much money on a private shuttle.

Ultimately, I believe this is an issue of young, affluent (read: white) people gentrifying a city, but refusing to come face-to-face with the individuals they are gentrifying. Upon reading the article, I drew connections between this two-tiered transit system and the rise of chartered public schools in the US. Like The Guardian states, Leap is "accessible to anyone who downloads its smartphone app, has a credit card and is willing to pay nearly three times as much for a slicker, slightly faster and undeniably more pretentious version of a bus ride to work." Similarly, charter schools will accept anyone who applies to the school, given that students are not disabled and have their name drawn in high-stakes lotteries.
While on paper, both of these systems have valid and good intentions (getting cars off the roads, reducing traffic/offering free alternatives to public schools), both only serve to perpetuate segregation, gentrification, inequity, and ultimately fail to address the real cause of the issues they're trying to solve.

Punk Rock Ginsberg

Due to the fact that we're still on Ginsberg and Howl in lecture, which I'm totally not complaining about or anything, I felt the need to showcase his punk rock side in the years after the publication of Howl. For starters, "A Supermarket in America" truly did inspire this song from the Clash called "I'm All Lost in the Supermarket" off of (in my opinion) their magnum opus London Calling. 

The Clash had been signed to a big boy record label and a lot of fans called them sellouts, even though their albums continued to have some really solid hits. So at one point during their Sandinistas! tour, the band were playing in Times Square and had Ginsberg backstage. As the urban legend goes, apparently straight from Ginsberg's mouth, Joe Strummer invited him on stage to talk smack on American politics, but Ginsberg had written a little anti-authoritarian song instead. So the band and Ginsberg practiced together for five minutes, then performed their impromptu song called "Capital Air," which the Clash later emulates with "Ghetto Defendant." Though this video is again, not an actual movin' pictures sorta clip, here's a nice live recording:

(Don't be fooled by Youtube. There's another video similiar to this that claims to have the Clash backing Ginsberg, but it clearly was not the Clash in that video. Though it's called Poetry in Motion and has some kind words from Ginsberg at the beginning and end of the clip.)

Is it not fitting for a Beat like Ginsberg to expand his musical horizons from jazz to punk rock? Goin' on stage to say whatever is on his mind without going on trial for it? It's pretty great because thirty years after the trial for Howl, Ginsberg likely couldn't fully identify with "I Fought the Law" because HE WON! 

Paradox of San Francisco

Rebecca Solnit, in her essay entitled "The Sinews of War Are Boundless Money and the Brains of War are in The Bay Area," outlines the conservative aspects of a city celebrated for its liberalism. Solnit highlights various military complexes, such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, United Defense, and RoboteX, all of which are private contractors who have developed military technology. All of these companies are located south of the SF bay, embedded in the Santa Clara area. Other military sites are interspersed throughout the city.
This conservative strain cannot be called an encroachment on the liberal values of the Franciscan city. The young wealthy techie culture of Silicon Valley is a recent development in San Fran history, but the military culture dates as far back as the 1860's. In Presidio there were military encampments for the Spanish and Mexicans, and SF was a deployment zone for the Second World War.
 I was curious to see where the liberal, organic, bohemian, beat, what-have-you culture was centered around, and the Zen Buddhist centers (another map in the Solnit book) are heavily organized around the center of the city, near the Golden Gate bridge. Queer spaces are near Market street, close to the Bridge as well. The military and conservative wing of the city, with a handful of exceptions, is organized in the outskirts of the city.
The conflicting images of the military industrial complex and the beat anti-war liberals brought to mind several of Allen Ginsberg's poems centered around the Bay area. He notes a juxtaposition between the industrial and natural. In In the back of the real, Ginsberg talks about a yellow flower that is a "flower of industry." The natural shows through the industrial, and Ginsberg celebrates this. This same metaphor is found in Sunflower Sutra, where Ginsberg contrasts our internal beauty with the rough exterior of the "bleak dusty imageless locomotive." Contextualizing Ginsberg's poem's within the framework of the left/right geographic paradigm presents an interesting look at the paradoxes of San Francisco.

Everyone Has an Uncle Who Has Slept with Allen Ginsberg (TW: sexual assault, pedophilia)

Well, not me.
But everyone else, presumably.

True or not, poet Sam Sax raises an interesting point in his poem "Everyone Has an Uncle Who Has Slept with Allen Ginsberg" wherein he talks about building a legacy for oneself out of the minor (sexual) intersections of someone else's celebrity. 

But what this poem does in part, for me, is that it asks us to speculate at the most and suspend a polite disinterest at the least with regard to the poet's personal life. While it is not on any of us to pass judgement as to his sexual proclivities, there are troubling details about Ginsberg as a person that sometimes interfere with my reading of his works. He was an alleged rapist and pedophile, as well as a member of NAMBLA, which are facts that complicate (for me) divorcing him from his creative output. I guess the question that I am attempting to pose is whether we can or should separate the writer from his works. Is there any place for examining his writings bearing in mind his wrong-doings?

Ginsberg's America

I really enjoyed Ginsberg's "America" because of its his political sarcasm and critique of the American government (and American in general) but also because of the unwanted part that Ginsberg plays as an American himself. Ginsberg's mishmash of anger ("go fuck yourself with you atom bomb") and hopeful optimism (when will you be angelic?, when will you end the human war?) clash and show feelings of blame but also partial responsibility — feelings that I think are unfortunately still prevalent more than 50 years later. 

I was particularly taken by the lines "I haven't read the newspaper in months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder". I was shocked to read that this was true in 1956, its sad that if this poem was timestamped 2009 instead, the same problems would be true with war, murder and hate. Just how much political progress have we made? Ginsberg doesn't apologize for being a communist as a kid, and maybe he's right. 

The poem likewise criticises just how much freedom Americans really have. The "American Dream" promises success, wealth and freedom, yet Ginsberg questions just how much of these we really have. 

Walt Whitman and the Beats

Last year, I got pretty into Walt Whitman. Upon reading Leaves of Grass and many of his other poems, I came to realize the striking similarities between Whitman and the Beats, especially between him and Ginsberg, who even references Whitman in at least one of his poems.

In both structure and content, Whitman's work is synchronous with some of the main concerns of the beat writers, as the beats and Whitman were seeking enlightenment in similar ways through similar experiences and in the same locations. Two poems that I feel bear the most similarities are Ginsberg s Sunflower Sutra, and Whitman s Passage to India, which I will post a link to because it is incredibly long, and share a journal I wrote that contains brief analysis of the two poems:

http://www.bartleby.com/142/183.html


In both of the aforementioned poems, the speakers romanticize the idea of returning to the appreciation of the beauty of nature as it is observed being juxtaposed with the rapidly expanding progress of industrialization and modernization of the western world. "I see over my own continent the Pacific railroad surmounting every barrier, I see continual trains of cars winding along the Platte carrying freight and passengers, I hear the locomotives rushing and roaring, and the shrill steam-whistle, I hear the echoes reverberate through the grandest scenery in the world,"(Whitman). Throughout his poem, Whitman uses the locomotive and the railroads in California to symbolize the modernization and industrialization of the western world. Through doing so he acknowledges, and even stands in awe at the progress of humanity. However, the main point of Whitman's poem is the importance of returning to and acknowledging humanity's roots through the characterization of the Eastern and Western worlds juxtaposed against each other. This is evident as the speaker of his poem reaches for the past when he says ." In the Old World the east the Suez canal, The New by its mighty railroad spann'd The seas inlaid with eloquent gentle wires; Yet first, to sound and ever sound , the cry with thee O soul, The Past! the Past! the Past! The Past- the dark unfathom'd retrospect! The teeming gulf-the sleepers and the shadows! The past- the infinite greatness of the past! For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?" (Whitman).

Just like Whitman, Ginsberg uses the image of the locomotive in his poem “Sunflower Sutra” to represent the industrialized western world and to highlight the beauty he finds in a sunflower or the more simplistic things of the past that one might overlook in the industrialized world. The title of his poem in itself also alludes to Sanskrit, and to the return to the values of the Old World, or the east which is exactly what Whitman is doing with his poem as well. “Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive? the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?” (Ginsberg). The image Ginsberg creates here suggests the forgetting of ones roots as he suggests this sunflower has as it has died, and lost its identity in the shadow of this locomotive. This is comparable to what Whitman does in his poem, as he suggests that the erection of the new westernized society has made the old world obsolete in the eyes of many.

Ginsberg's "Wild Orphan"

Ginsberg's "Wild Orphan" is a powerful poem narrating the internal crisis of a young man whose father he's never met. I found this piece extremely powerful as the boy dreams and grieves of a life that he can not have. The "nostalgias of another life" are akin to the desires most people have; We dream of another life that has never happened. Furthermore, the boy seems to experience a sort of personality crisis as there is a "mythology he cannot inherit." In other words, he does not know his ancestry and so does not know who he truly is.
Ginsberg's organized form conveys a sense of stability and structure despite the title's description of the boy as "wild." This is because, while the boy is yet to figure out where he has come from, and perhaps then who he truly is, he has already established a sense of self unique to himself.

Below is a picture of Ginsberg seemingly celebrating life. I could not find anything relevant to this poem but I figured this would convey some sort of "wildness."

America When Will You Be Angelic?

"America" is my favorite poem by Allen Ginsberg, mostly because it addresses and personifies the nation head-on in a dynamic conversation, and because I think it remains so relevant almost 60 years later. The poem is at once angry, disappointed, nostalgic, and slightly hopeful. It alternates between Ginsberg's concerns with America and himself, saying "America when will we end the human war? Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb," but in contrast the next lines say "I don't feel good don't bother me. I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind." I am interested in when it occurs to Ginsberg that he is America and that he is talking to himself, because for a chunk of the poem thereafter he is talking/writing as America, as the nation, stating "I'd better consider my national resources." I think that part is really creative and genius, plus the whole idea of himself as America brings to mind the idea that we are all part of this nation, all contribute to it, maintain it, consent to it, consciously or unconsciously. There are multiple Cold War and Communist references throughout the poem, and it points to the many stereotypes and shames of America.
On a whole I interpret this poem as Ginsberg being disillusioned with America and it's promises of freedom, success, and abundance. I think a similar feeling is shared by many people today, where two dollars and twenty-seven cents will get you even less than it did in 1956, and there is more technology, stricter laws, more prisons, and ongoing wars. The poem really makes me think of myself in the context of being an American and living in America, rather than as just an individual in Santa Cruz, and I think its important to consider what that nationality means.

"Song" and The Weight of Love

"Song" by Allen Ginsberg was one of my favorite pieces of poetry I've read this week because of its simple expression of an emotion- love- that takes the reader through an evolving story, while writing in accessible language.  Sometimes we couch poetry in beautiful, complicated words that make your eyes cross and your head ache.  Ginsberg doesn't give me a headache, but he reminds me of the weight of love and, in a way, the weight of caring. "Song" tells the reader that love is our Big Bang and our weight to bear.  We were made from love, and we carry the responsibility to love and hope for love in return.  Eventually, as the poem tells us, we will end up waiting for the burden of love to fall from our shoulders as our souls (hopefully) crawl back from where they came from.  Until then, our burden is to care, because we are made from love and by love.  I tack on the weight of caring as well, for love causes the action of caring, for ourselves and for others.  Perhaps our purpose in life is to care- and at essential times, to love.  I'll be thinking about that as the quarter progresses.  "Song" is below.

SONG

The weight of the world
is love.
Under the burden
of solitude,
under the burden
of dissatisfaction

the weight,
the weight we carry
is love.

Who can deny?
In dreams
it touches
the body,
in thought
constructs
a miracle,
in imagination
anguishes
till born
in human--
looks out of the heart
burning with purity--
for the burden of life
is love,

but we carry the weight
wearily,
and so must rest
in the arms of love
at last,
must rest in the arms
of love.

No rest
without love,
no sleep
without dreams
of love--
be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
or machines,
the final wish
is love
--cannot be bitter,
cannot deny,
cannot withhold
if denied:

the weight is too heavy

--must give
for no return
as thought
is given
in solitude
in all the excellence
of its excess.

The warm bodies
shine together
in the darkness,
the hand moves
to the center
of the flesh,
the skin trembles
in happiness
and the soul comes
joyful to the eye--

yes, yes,
that's what
I wanted,
I always wanted,
I always wanted,
to return
to the body
where I was born.

60th Anniversary of Ginsberg's 'Howl'

NPR story here:
http://www.npr.org/2015/04/12/399159190/i-saw-the-all-stars-of-our-generation-honor-allen-ginsbergs-howl

Jonah Raskin, author of American Scream: Allen Ginsberg's Howl and the Making of the Beat Generation, says the poem was about many things, including sex, drugs, youth, alienation, defiance and transcendence.

"People, even if they don't get the whole poem or even if they're a little confused at times, they get the rhythm, and they get the feeling of it," he says. "It's like a quintessential expression of the Beat perspective and philosophy, where you're down in the gutter but you're also beatific. You're spiritually uplifted."

SF Lit Syllabus

Class Syllabus:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ffupD2YD41XK6CxgRx5WvQQC0SxWvKWOnmIb5BIIShs/edit?usp=sharing

Trey's Section Syllabus:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hKfmhiY4VZOON2ENHX5uts5zgvERKgG8nJ-47BmjHJ4/edit?usp=sharing

Rob's Lecture Notes...

are here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ODiSoP7lHgI1gbBrYp-8N1NJACDggmMUNLlYw4BmZ-c/edit?usp=sharing