Beat Poetry's Connections to the Other Arts
Together, the arts (poetry, music, painting, dance, etc.) of a specific time period often reflect the overall attitude of a specific generation. Indeed, the arts themselves are often combined. Just as a painter may listen to music while he paints, a poet may paint a picture to present with his poem. The following are images of art pieces and sound files of songs that represent some of the Beat Poets' qualities, but in art and musical genres.
OTHER ARTS FROM THE BEAT GENERATION
Art: The Surrealism of Salvador Dali
The above images represent Beat Poet's qualities such as counter-culture, anti-militarism, and abstraction.
1. The first image shows Shirley Temple, a popular child actress at the time (and therefore part of popular culture), and turns her into a monster. This shows obvious counter-culture, a truly Beat quality.
2. The second image personifies war. It depicts war as a deathly face that is filled with other shriveled and agonized faces. It shows the multitude of people that war effects, as well as the anti-militarism views of the Beats.
3. The third image depicts an abstracted view of real objects. The distortion of the objects in the painting is akin to the nonsensical words and poem lines of the Beats. Both of these are examples of abstraction in an art form.
4. The fourth image depicts further abstraction of the same objects shown in the third image. It depicts the same Beat-like qualities as its counterpart in image three.
1. The first image shows Shirley Temple, a popular child actress at the time (and therefore part of popular culture), and turns her into a monster. This shows obvious counter-culture, a truly Beat quality.
2. The second image personifies war. It depicts war as a deathly face that is filled with other shriveled and agonized faces. It shows the multitude of people that war effects, as well as the anti-militarism views of the Beats.
3. The third image depicts an abstracted view of real objects. The distortion of the objects in the painting is akin to the nonsensical words and poem lines of the Beats. Both of these are examples of abstraction in an art form.
4. The fourth image depicts further abstraction of the same objects shown in the third image. It depicts the same Beat-like qualities as its counterpart in image three.
Music: The Jazz of Louis Armstrong
Jazz music had a very strong influence on Beat poetry. Poets used to gather at clubs where jazz musicians played, in hopes that they would be inspired by the music. In fact, some Beats even wrote their poems with the intention of them having a jazz accompaniment in the background.
During the 1900s, "Muggles" was a common slang name for Marijuana. This jazz song glorifies the psychedelic feelings/perceptions that the drug can give you, which is a fairly popular topic among Beat poets, many of whom experimented with drugs for inspiration.
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"Heebie Jeebies" was another slang term introduced and popularized during the 1900s. Beat poets, like jazz musicians, incorporated "hip" vocabulary into their poems and songs (respectively).
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CONTEMPORARY REPRESENTATIONS OF BEAT QUALITIES IN THE ARTS
Music : The American Pop-Rock of Train
"Save Me, San Francisco" by Train reminded me of the Beats because San Francisco is where the largest concentration of Beats were located. The Beats also believed that they were "saving" poetry because they were bringing poetry back to the common people through use of slang, etc.
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"Drops of Jupiter" by Train also reminded me of the Beats because it contains lines with very vivid imagery that is somewhat psychedelic in nature. It almost seems like a stream-of-consciousness, which is also a Beat poet attribute.
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