It is 50 years this autumn
(October 13, 1955) since the Bop and Beat poets of the East Coast (Jack
Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg) and the Ecological Beat poets of the West Coast (Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder,
Philip Whalen) met at Six Gallery in San Francisco. John Suiter, in his evocative
book, Poets on the Peaks: Gary Snyder,
Philip Whalen & Jack Kerouac in the North Cascades (20020 had this to
say: “The Six Gallery reading has sometimes been called the first synthesis of
the East and West Coast factions of the Beat Generation” (p.148) The American Beat poets were also
connected to the Black Mountain tradition of poetry.
The history of the Black Mountain
tradition has been well told and recounted by Martin Duberman in his revealing
and historic missive, Black Mountain: An
Exploration in Community (1975). The Beat and the Black Mountain literary
traditions attempted , in a conscious and committed way, to breakup and
breakdown dated and older ways of writing and doing poetry. This innovative
approach to doing poetry was well traversed in The Poetics of the New American Poetry (Donald Allen/Warren
Tallman: 1983). This attempt, by the Beats and the Black Mountain traditions,
to move poetry in a new direction, and redefine how poetry should be done,
prepared the way for the Counter Culture of the 1960s-1970s.
It did not take long for the
Black Mountain and Beat traditions to move up the West Coast and into Canada.
In fact, the Canadian West Coast in the 1960s-1970s became a veritable literary
battlefield waged between Canadian nationalists and Canadian literary types who
were keener on bending the knee to the American Beat and Black Mountain
traditions. The battles were fought on the streets, in universities and in
small publications. There was no truce then, and there is not now.
The tale of those who took the
American side and who convinced many Canadians to write like the Black Mountain
and Beat traditions is graphically told by Warren Tallman in his well crafted
book, In The Midst (1992). All the
saints of the American and Canadian Beat and Black Mountain traditions are hung
poster high for the curious and devoted to see. This was the age of Tish, the founding of Wood*censored*’s Canadian Literature and The Georgia
Straight. This was an era when many Canadians bowed low to American models
of literary life and anarchist politics. The star spangled beaver was very much
in our midst in those heated days.
But, as ever, the Canadian
nationalists would not be silent or still. The beaver did bite back and it bit
with a sharp bite. There were good Canadian poets who would not be colonized,
and they did not want to be part of a sophisticated comprador class. The
culture wars were most intense. Those who stood for a more indigenous and
nationalist way could not be silenced. Milton Acorn resigned from The Georgia Straight after the first
edition. He saw the American anarchist writing on the wall. Marya Fiamengo (who
taught in the English department at UBC), spoke out loud and clear about the
American Trojan Horse in the midst. Robin Mathews, with surgical precision, cut
to the quick. Warren Tallman called him ‘my enemy’, and he did whatever he
could to undermine and subvert the nationalism of Mathews. Pat Lane and
Gwendolyn MacEwan entered the ring, also.
It is 50 years this autumn since
the Beats met in San Francisco. The combination of the Beats and the Black
Mountain traditions did much to reshape and redefine West Coast literary
culture. But, .the beaver did bite back, and we, as Canadians, need to hear how
the beaver did this. The tale is yet to be fully told of how the West Coast
Canadian nationalists stood up against the colonials and compradors and held
their ground. May such a good story be told well and soon.
rsd