Epochs

Because I’m here and now—and living in the literary movement that speaks to my soul.

The Beat Generation

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn, looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night…”
…opening line to Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”
First read in the Six Gallery, S.F. [...]

The Harlem Renaissance

“I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well.
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed–
I, too, am America.”
—Langston Hughes

The Lost Generation

“You’re an expatriate. You lost touch with the soil.
Fake European Stardards have ruined you.
You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex.
You spend all your time talking—not working.
You are an expatriate—see. You hang around cafés.”

Chapter 12, “The Sun Also Rises”
-Ernest Hemmingway

The Transcendentalists

“I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson