Five poets on the meaning of the Beats today

The event featured in this excerpt, titled “THE BEAT POETS: A CONVERSATION WITH PHILADELPHIA WRITERS,” brought together five Philadelphia-based writers — Frank Sherlock, Michelle Taransky, Maria Raha, Chris McCreary, and Thomas Devaney — to talk about the Beat legacy. They considered the significance of the Beats to poets today, from classic figures like Kerouac and Ginsberg to alt-Beats (Baraka, Waldman) to the legacy of Beat poetic elements (babbleflow, the road trip, bohemianism) and beyond. Here in Jacket2, in our "media highlights" column, we present a 20-minute excerpt from the 82-minute-long program. The excerpt was edited by Ali Castleman. Frank Sherlock is the author of the soon-to-be-released Space Between These Lines Not Dedicated, Over Here, The City Real & Imagined (with CAConrad). Maria Raha is the author of Cinderella's Big Score: Women of the Punk and Indie Underground and Hellions: Pop Culture's Rebel Women, both published by Seal Press. Chris McCreary's latest book, [ neüro / måntic ], is forthcoming from Furniture Press later this year.  Michelle Taransky, the author of Sorry Was in the Woods (Omnidawn 2013) and Barn Burned, Then (Omnidawn 2009), was selected by Marjorie Welish for the 2008 Omnidawn Poetry Prize. Thomas Devaney is the author of The Picture that Remains (The Print Center, 2014). He studied with Allen Ginsberg at Brooklyn College, where he earned an MFA in poetry.