Wyatt

City Lights Bookstore opened in 1953 and still stands tall being one of the many landmarks in North Beach. It has been called a store for “great book lovers” and “a literary meeting place since 1953.” Founded by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Marten, City Lights Bookstore was opened to give a group of poets called the Beat Poets a place to write and publish their work. The Beat Poets were a society of artists who questioned social life and wrote poetry to prove their point. One of the most famous poems in beat history was called “Howl.” Howl is a poem that tells the story of a man whose life was disrupted by the community’s choices. Here are the first couple sentences of the poem:

// 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, // // Angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection // // to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, //

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howl

The 3rd grade was so fascinated by beat literature that I decided to be a poet myself and write a beat poem of my own:

//My life was interrupted by my people’s choices of mind and community’s polluted alleyways crawling with naked fugitives bubbling over with hate.//


 * // By Wyatt and Sam //**

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