I'm miles from my home

[MoseyWalker]

miles. searching. fumbling. waiting.

A question mark hangs like a promise. when will the people tell them we are miles from our home?

peace

[MoseyWalker]

1. I really am

202 miles from home.

It's been a strange trip.

[sweetheart]

3. or you are at home

walking across your living room, strange trip indeed.

[MoseyWalker]

5. one can only wish

I'm away from home again, and am tired of it.

I wish I could remember what my living room looks like.

[silverlib]

2. It's so bad

It's gotta be good.

Everyone has so much to say
They talk their lives away.

[MoseyWalker]

4. I have to say

thanks and what a great response.

[MoseyWalker]

6. well

rights and protest movements reshape the notion of
what it means to be an American? What connec-
tions do you see between the poetry and
the civil rights struggle?

How would you describe the mood or abid-
ing intentions of American literature during this
period? How does the experience of the Vietnam
War affect the poetry of this period? What other
social or political forces shaped the poetry of this
time? How does feminism influence the poetry of
the period? Where do you see the influence of pop-
ular culture?

Along with the New York school poets, the Beat
poets were deeply influenced by life in the city. In the
late 1940s and early 1950s, writers like Allen Gins-
berg, Jack Kerouac, and Lucien Carr, all of whom
had connections to Columbia University, met and
discussed their new, experimental vision for poetry.
New York culture, with its bustling nightlife and
hosts of adventurous students, musicians, and
artists, offered much for young rebels struggling to
find a literary voice. By the middle 1950s, San Fran-
cisco also featured a lively and unconventional art-
istic community. When Ginsberg moved to San
Francisco in 1954, he soon became a center of atten-
tion in a book-loving, verse-loving North Beach
neighborhood where bohemian and gay lifestyles
were tolerated to an extent that few other American
metropolises could match. Literary historians often
regard Ginsberg’s first public performance of Howl
on October 7, 1955, as the inauguration of a “San
Francisco Renaissance” and a demonstration that
“Beat” culture had truly arrived. For more than
thirty years after that night, San Francisco and New
York City were meccas for radical and experimental
art in America, places where authors such as Kero-
uac, Gary Snyder, Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, and Audre
Lorde learned from one another and formed power-
ful communities of verse. How does their urban set-
ting shape the nature and themes of their work?

POETRY OF LIBERATION
Protest Movements and American Counterculture

[silverlib]

7. Okay

Not long after the devastation of World War II,Americans found themselves embroiled in the
Korean War (1950–53) and the Vietnam War(1964–75. Both of these conflicts proved to be more
ethically complicated than World War II, and in Vietnam guerilla warfare made the actual fighting
more confusing as well. As a result, the U.S. government promoted traditional values, namely domesticity
and political and cultural conservatism, to fight for stability on the domestic front in what
seemed like an increasingly turbulent and threatening world. The new media, especially television,
helped to enforce this domestic ideology in which family and home remained a central priority for
women; indeed, the enormous subdivisions of suburban ranch houses became important symbols of
American safety, pastoral happiness, and prosperity during this period. The 1950s, in many ways,
marked the beginning of modern American popular culture as we now know it. By the mid-1960s, the
political, social, and cultural climate had changed dramatically. With the rising popularity of rock and
roll and the beginning of the sexual revolution, American youth culture seemed to diverge as never
before from middle-aged, middle-class American life. Adolescence became a demographic, a separate
cultural audience, a different state of mind. At the same time, undercurrents of discontent with racist,
sexist, and economically inequitable American social and political practices grew into full-fledged
movements, many of which skillfully exploited the media.
Led by Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, James Farmer, Shirley Chisholm, and many others, the
civil rights movement became a center of national attention. Sit-ins, Freedom Rides, and other nonviolent
demonstrations shared the spotlight with important court cases and national legislation to
change the legal, economic, and social status of American minorities. The Vietnam-era draft took a
heavy toll on black neighborhoods in major cities,and many downtown areas were devastated by riots
in the years from 1965 through 1970. As anxiety and moral concern about the war spread to college campuses,
thousands of schools became centers of political ferment and many forms of experimentation. A
sexual revolution spread from these schools to mainstream American life, and at the same time the
rights and power of women underwent a transformation unprecedented in U.S. history. By 1972, with
the end of the draft and a scaling-down of the American involvement in Southeast Asia, antiwar
fervor slackened and many writers and artists drifted from a common cause into a kind of discontent
that seemed fragmented and desultory by comparison. Nonetheless, in art, music, student culture,
and “alternative” communities, a style took hold that remains strong and recognizable to this day.

POETRY OF LIBERATION

[MoseyWalker]

8. thanks!

I was trying to give credit where credit is due, but kept being denied.

thumbs up!