#dharmabums

Gary Snyder,  New York City, March 1991.  Immortalized as Japhy Ryder in Kerouac’s Dharma Bums, Allen early on wrote of him: Gary Snyder a bearded youth of 26, also from the Northwest, formerly a lumberjack and seaman, student of literature and anthropology who had lived with American Indians and taken the religious drug peyote with them, and who is now occupied in the study of Chinese and Japanese preparatory for the drunken silence of a Zen monastery in Japan.” Later writing: “he is one of the most virtuous, visionarily inspired as well as intellectually grounded American poets of this half century, a legend in his own lifetime..” (photo: Allen Ginsberg) #garysnyder #poet #zen #ecology #mountainsandriverswithoutend #poetrycommunity #instapoets #beatgeneration #dharmabums #jackkerouac (at Manhattan, New York) https://www.instagram.com/p/CVOSuDnPJoO/?utm_medium=tumblr

Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

The first celebrated reading of “Howl”, Part I only, at 6 Gallery, October 7, 1955, wasn’t taped,  so Prof. Tom Parkinson, member of Rexroth’s old Buddhist anarchist circle, organized another reading at Berkeley’s little Town Hall Theater festooned with Chinese ink brush orgy drawings by Robert LaVigne-- a couple hundred people crowded in, a mixture of artists from San Francisco, poetry aficionados, friends of Robert Duncan, ladies from the Potrero District, North Beach Bohemians, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Cassady, Ann charters, and an amazing group of poets on stage including Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Michael McClure, with Kenneth Rexroth as Master of Ceremonies. Five months after the 6 Gallery reading I’d finished Parts II and III of “Howl”. This added a huge dimension, extending the power of the poem into the Moloch section and beyond. And this was the first time I’d read “Howl” all the way through aloud, beginning to end, as well as “Sunflower Sutra”, “A Strange New Cottage In Berkeley” and “America,” further experiments with the long breath’d verse line.

Gary Snyder in his backyard hut, Berkeley, I’d met him that month referred by Kenneth Rexroth - he was studying Chinese, preparing for residence in Kyoto Zen monastery a year later, rode bicycle, prepared tea, showed me poems in springboard binder, I recognized W.C. Williams’ influence, like on mine. [Photo & Caption: Allen Ginsberg Courtesy Allen Ginsberg Estate / Stanford University Libraries]

“ For those of you collectors out there, this print with this specific caption, (Allen varied each caption so that no caption was repeated exactly the same) is up for auction this week at the annual pba galleries auction. Auction closes on the 18th.  

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