The Beats: Bringing to America a Zen Aesthetic

Gary Snyder presents in his prose essay collection A Place in Space a culture and artistic aesthetic connecting all humans to the oneness of the world found in Buddhism. In his essay "A Single Breath," Snyder compares poetry to meditation creating a background for what today is known as the "Zen aesthetic" (115). Additionally, in comparing the aesthetic developed through "A Single Breath"" to his "Notes on the Beat Generation, " one can easily see a connection between the beat poets' values and lifestyles and the Zen aesthetic.

Snyder begins "A Single Breath" in establishing basic differences between meditation and poetry stating that, "Meditation looks inward, poetry holds forth. One is for oneself, the other is for the world. One enters the moment, the other shares it" (109). Thus, the two are eternally separated as you cannot be entering the moment, while sharing it--it is one or the other. And yet, the two have a fascinating tie: in order to really re-live and share an experience, you need to experience it profoundly and let the experience itself twinge, clang, or simply strum the inner strings of your soul creating a music, an art--a bit of "Magic" (15).

Snyder continues stressing the distinction between these two practices: meditation and writing poetry, "Yet poetry (and the literary world) has sometimes been perceived as dangerous to the spiritual career." (112). This concept is not limited to the Buddhist realm of though as it has also pervaded Western thought in the form of Milton's Paradise Lost, where the speaker struggles with the fact that in writing poetry he is acting as a creator, and in trying to be a creator, he is trying to be God, and thus, becomes a devil with a heightened ego thinking he could ever be God. Milton then is left distanced from God and religion (and also society and it's values) in his creation of poetry. The beats too were left distanced from society in their beliefs and values expressed through their poetry and other forms of creation, "When [Kerouac's] novel On the Road was published in 1957, the word beat became famous and overnight America became aware that it had a generation of writers and intellectuals on its hands that was breaking all the rules" (9). The beats strongly felt that, "A regular job ties you down and leaves you no time. Better to live simply, be poor, and have the time to wander and write and dig (meaning to penetrate and absorb and enjoy) what was going on in the world" (9). This simple life and process of reflection valued so deeply by the beat generation coincides with the Zen aesthetic as well. In a way, "digging," as Snyder defines it, can become a synonym to meditation.

Another danger expressed by Snyder which limits the poet's "spiritual career" is a desire for fame, "Ikkyu, a fifteenth-century Japanese Zen master an a fine (and strikingly original) poet himself, laughingly ridiculed his fellow poets, knowing as he did the distractions and temptations that might come with literary aspirations" (112). The beats too often shunned such aspirations seeking only to create and invent. Societal acclaim for them was a by-product of their search for art and experience of life. The desire to live simply, while not achieving fame, Snyder conveys in stating, "[This new generation] published its poems in its own little magazines, and didn't even bother to submit works to the large established highbrow journals that had held the monopoly on avant-garde writing for so long" (9). Although the aspect previously mentioned of sharing poetry is still valued, the goals in sharing their creations for the beats are not the "literary aspirations" which Ikkyu ridicules. The beat generation in a innovative philosophic movement seeks to write and observe truths more than to achieve acclaim.

The beats also work to illustrate the word simply as it is, stumbling upon profound truths in their observances of ordinary things rather than to gaudily transform reality through highbrow literary allusion and other tactics. Snyder relates that "In Zen circles it is said, 'Unformed people delight in the gaudy and in novelty. Cooked people delight in the ordinary" (115). Thus, once again, beat beliefs and values coincide with the Zen aesthetic. Snyder further develops this aesthetic, "In poetry and in meditation you must be shameless, have no secrets from yourself, be constantly alert, make no judgment of wise and foolish, high or low class, and give everything its full due" (116). The beats, as is clearly seen through Ginsberg's Howl have no shame, no secrets, and make no judgments. Snyder explains, "The beat generation can be seen as an aspect of the worldwide trend for intellectuals to reconsider the nature of the human individual, existence, personal motives, the qualities of love and hatred, and the means of achieving wisdom" (13). Thus, in conclusion, the beat generation is a contemporary American enactment of the Zen aesthetic as presented by Snyder. For the beats, poetry is simple and real--"There is no self-pity or accusation or politics, simply human beings and facts" (10). The beat generation worked with this facts of life and created a beautiful, deeply real collection of literary art through their own development of a Zen aesthetic.

Brautigan and Brechin Agree: True Wilderness is Extinct

Richard Brautigan commented on the devastation created by imperial, capitalistic societies in his novel Trout Fishing in America more than three decades before Gary Brechin illustrated in detail the demise of what he defines as the Pacific Basin in his social critique Imperial San Francisco. Brechin claims in his introduction, "No area on the planet is now free from the process of global urbanization. Wilderness has ceased to exist" (Brechin xxii). Brautigan also presented the lack of a pristine, majestic wilderness, along side a nostalgic yearning for such a space. In his "Worsewick" chapter, Brautigan describes what should be a majestic family get-away--a hot spring--but this nature site is instead spoiled and possibly toxic, "There was a green slime growing around the edges of the tub and there were dozens of dead fish floating in our bath...The green slime and the dead fish played and relaxed with us and flowed out overs us and entwined themselves about us" (Brautigan 43). The unease and discomfort created by the lack of serene escape aid Brautigan in conveying disgust with the current state of nature--created by the powers that be among men: money and desire.
Brechin states that "as early as 1855, the Yuba, Feather, and American River canyons had begun vomiting torrents of mud and gravel into the Sacramento Valley" (Brechin 48). Also commenting on the Californian viewpoints which lead to such disaster, "Gut and get out: that was 'the true California spirit' brought with and proudly nourished by the Argonauts [the forty-niner miners] Western landscapes had aged with uncanny speed, but few Californians noticed as they drew upon posterity's legacy to create their fortunes" (Brechin 64). The desire for capital at all costs through mining, real estate, or any other forms of investment possessed the powerful elite of San Francisco, according to Brechin, and this desire (and distance from the devastating ecological results) granted these looters of the earth the only justification which they needed--capital.
Furthermore in "The Cleveland Wrecking Yard" chapter, Brautigan conveys the extent to which man has come to treat nature unnaturally. Upon discovering a trout stream for sale, the narrator asks for more information regarding this peculiar item, the salesman replies:
We're selling it by the foot length. You can buy as little as you want or you can buy all we've got left...We're selling the waterfalls separately of course, and the trees and birds, flowers, grass and ferns we're also selling extra. The insects we're giving away free with a minimum purchase of ten feet of stream. (Brautigan 104)
This also echoes California's desire to "gut and get out" in the wrecking yards attempt to gain capital from something which should be valued so immensely (in it's natural environment) as to be priceless rather than partitioned into various sale items. Moreover, water should not be a privately sold and exploited item as it has been proven time and time again to be a vital natural resource. Brechin resonates this sentiment in discussing San Francisco's imperial power over San Mateo County and Hetch Hetchy through aqueducts, "Newlands (attorney for Spring Valley Water Company) well understood what the ratepayers, then as now, failed to comprehend--that water utilities exist primarily to nourish real estate, not people" (Brechin 99). Brautigan, however, extends this idea even further in exploring the effects of this negative ecological ravishing of rivers, forests, and mountains--on humans physically and emotionally. The yearning for a pristine nature site persists throughout all of Trout Fishing in America, while the depressing reality of nature's extinction pervades Brechin's Imperial San Francisco.

Brautigan Response: The Draw of the Ocean in San Francisco

Richard Brautigan's poem "The Harbor" echoes a lot of the ocean imagery of Ferlighetti's San Francisco Poems and further develops the connection between San Francisco and freedom of expression, art, and love (105). Although some may consider this poem from Brautigan to be a generic love poem, it is far from his usual style and thus appears less generic and more honest and real. Compare this poem for instance with his poem titled “Love Poem,” which is more the anti-thesis of the generic love poems and carries the subtle sardonic tone of both his poems from The Pill vs. Springhill Mine Disaster and poetic prose from Trout Fishing in America.
“The Harbor,” explores the relation between those of San Francisco and aspects of the ocean through their connection at the “harbor’--both a geographical location as well as a figurative location. “Storms of love,” which tear lovers apart, and the “calms of love,” which return them to one another echo the back-and-forth motions of waves onto the shore. The poem’s speaker illustrates “[f]ish [swimming] between our ribs/ and sea gulls [crying] like mirrors/ to our blood,” suggesting the interconnectivity between the men of San Francisco and all life around them--especially within an ecosystem as diverse as a harbor. Additionally, this imagery intertwines not only man with animal, but also lover with lover as the animals bind ribs and blood of those being alluded to in the poem. Despite the distance created between the lovers and the harbor a few lines earlier (“I lie here in a harbor/ that does not know/ where your body ends/ and my body begins.”), the gap is closed through the lovers interconnectivity with the animal-life of the harbor.
Thus, the relationship developed with the harbor of the speaker is in tune with many of San Francisco, especially poets. The water and life of the ocean and it’s juxtaposition to bustling human life within a harbor has a poetic quality all it’s own that even Brautigan cannot deny, just as a San Franciscan cannot help but feel the pull of the tide.

Ferlighetti/Ginsberg Response: Representation in America

Both Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg complicate notions of America and issues of representation within America's vastly heterogeneous culture. Ferlinghetti utilizes images of imperialism and the vast class divide to disintegrate an image of America as a democracy, and rather re-representing America as an imperialistic plutocracy in his poem “To the Oracle at Delphi,” which was read at Delphi, Greece in March of 2001 at UNESCO World Poetry Day. More than five decades before, Ginsberg revealed America’s ignorance towards the non-dominating cultures, which had consequently created a lack of representation for the silenced majority through his direct address towards the nation in his 1956 poem “America”.
Ferlinghetti’s imperialistic illustration of America develops to reveal the lack of democratic freedom and problems of representation within a vastly diverse population. The speaker introduces himself as "Americus, the American,” but later asks “Why are you staring at me/as if I were America itself/the new Empire" ( Ferlinghetti 79). Despite the connection created between this speaker and his country, a divide is created through the speaker’s denial that he is a representation of America, thus distancing himself from the “new Empire”. Ferlinghetti links this imperialistic America to technology with its “electronic highways/carrying its corporate monoculture/around the world” (Ferlinghetti 79). These straightforward “electronic highways” are juxtaposed with the ancient artistic and mysterious glory of the "Great Oracle” (Ferlinghetti 79). This juxtaposition creates a tension between what America has become through the homogenization of “corporate monoculture,” with the root of the Western ideals it once stood for in it’s identification with Greek culture.
Furthermore, Ferlinghetti develops his complication of the image of America through suggesting a foreboding apocalyptic end describing this time as "the dusk of our civilization,” and requesting that the oracle (“[speaking] to us in the poet’s voice”) “tell us how to save us from ourselves” (Ferlinghetti 79-80). Ferlinghetti suggests that corporate America has silenced everything but technological advancement, and that we must turn back to the “Great Oracle”--“the poet’s voice”-- to truly advance as we turn back to our roots and original ideals. James Brook echoes this sentiment in his essay “Remarks on the Poetic Transformation of San Francisco,” "The contrarian streak in San Francisco still resists the corporate and bureaucratic agenda, the programmed slide toward uniformity of population and cityscape,” and yet, as Brooks also points out, “The self-destruction of the city (through this push to homogeneity and loss of art and diversity) may turn out to be the molting of a phoenix” (Brook 135).
Moreover, Ginsberg also accentuates the divide between how America as a country represents itself and those who actually comprise the nation. In the opening line of the poem, the speaker presents the sense of oblivion of self within this diverse nation, "America I've given you all and now I'm nothing"(Ginsberg 39). And yet later, the speaker attempts to reclaim the voice (and therefore representation) of America in stating, "It occurs to me that I am America./I am talking to myself again," and yet by the end of the poem, the speaker again addresses America, which dis-identifies the speaker once more with the running image of the nation and the violence and ignorance which it has come to stand for (Ginsberg 41).
Ginsberg also calls attention to many groups who are often silenced by the driving forces of dominant America. First asking "[w]hen will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?”, then stating (now speaking as America), "I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underprivileged who live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns" (Ginsberg 39;41). These recognitions of people who are often not granted a position from which to represent America complicates the image of America and idea of representation within a diverse society such as our own. In recognizing these people, Ginsberg suggests that it is their story we should be seeking to represent America--to truly live up to the democratic ideals we pretend to uphold.
Lastly, the speaker powerfully makes use of racist language saying, “Ugh. Him make Indians learn read./Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help” (Ginsberg 43). This use of racist language exposes racial stereotypes, as well as a racial hierarchy created through America’s history. Not only do these lines further recognize groups of people who are often silenced by dominate culture, but also admits past transgressions against our faux, professed American ideals. Moreover, a few lines later, the speaker suggests that these racist stereotypes come from the media, "America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set./America is this correct?"(Ginsberg 43). Thus, the speaker reveals the dominant representation of America as those with the money and power to control the media.
Both Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg’s representations of America propose we seek new voices and representations for our nation through poetry and recognition of underprivileged groups, while turning away from the dominance of “corporate monoculture” and popular media.