Frank Beacham's Journal

Dylan Thomas was born 106 years ago today

Dylan Thomas at the bar of the White Horse Tavern, 1952

Dylan Thomas was born 106 years ago today.

A Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems, "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night,” "And Death Shall have No Dominion,” the "Play for Voices,” Under Milk Wood and stories and radio broadcasts such as A Child's Christmas in Wales and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog.

Thomas became popular in his lifetime, and remained popular after his death — partly due to his larger than life character and his reputation for drinking to excess.

Born in Swansea, Wales in 1914, Thomas was undistinguished student. He left school at 16, becoming a journalist for a short time. Although many of his works appeared in print while a teenager, it was the publication of "Light breaks where no sun shines,” published in 1934, that caught the attention of the literary world.

While living in London, Thomas met Caitlin Macnamara, whom he married in 1937. Their relationship was defined by alcoholism and was mutually destructive. In the early part of his marriage, Thomas and his family lived hand-to-mouth, settling in the Welsh fishing village of Laugharne.

Although Thomas was appreciated as a popular poet in his lifetime, he found earning a living as a writer difficult, which resulted in Thomas augmenting his income with readings and broadcasts. His radio recordings for the BBC during the latter half of the 1940s brought him a level of celebrity.

In the 1950s, Thomas travelled to America, where his readings brought him a level of fame, though his erratic behavior and drinking worsened. His time in America cemented Thomas' legend, where he recorded to vinyl works such as A Child's Christmas in Wales.

The Scottish poet, Ruthven Todd, introduced Thomas to the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village, and the great Welsh bard was soon quaffing oceans of ale in the Horse's back room. Thomas made the tavern his headquarters on his tumultuous stateside forays, and soon tourists were lining up eight deep at the bar to watch him carouse.

Today, a plaque on the wall commemorates the November night in 1953 when the poet — still only 39 — downed one last shot, staggered outside and collapsed. After falling into a coma at the nearby Chelsea Hotel, he was whisked to St. Vincent's Hospital where he died.

Throughout his life, Thomas was close to attorney William Kunstler, who discovered him while a French major at Yale. Kunstler published one of his books, represented Thomas and was called to join him at the hospital after he collapsed outside the White Horse Tavern.

Although writing exclusively in the English language, Thomas has been acknowledged as one of the most important Welsh poets of the 20th century. Noted for his original, rhythmic and ingenious use of words and imagery, Thomas' position as one of the great modern poets has been much discussed, though this has not tarnished his popularity amongst the general public, who found his work accessible.

Here, Thomas reads “Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night”

Sylvia Plath was born 88 years ago today

Sylvia Plath on the beach, June, 1954

Photo by Gordon Ames Lameyer

Sylvia Plath was born 88 years ago today.

A poet, novelist and short story writer, Plath was born in Boston and studied at Smith College and Newnham College at the University of Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer.

She married fellow poet, Ted Hughes, in 1956 and they lived together first in the United States and then England. They had two children together, Frieda and Nicholas.

After suffering from depression from the age of 20 and a marital separation, Plath committed suicide in 1963 at the age of 30. Controversy continues to surround the events of her life and death, as well as her writing and legacy.

Plath is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for her two published collections, The Colossus and Other Poems and Ariel.

In 1982, she became the first poet to win a Pulitzer Prize posthumously, for The Collected Poems.

She also wrote The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her death.

Here, Plath reads “Daddy”

Beat poet Diane di Prima died on Sunday at the age of 86

Beat poet Diane di Prima died on Sunday at the age of 86. No cause of death was given.

di Prima was also an artist, prose writer, memoirist, playwright, social justice activist, fat acceptance activist and teacher. She authored nearly four dozen books, with her work translated into more than 20 languages.

Born in Brooklyn in 1934, she attended Hunter College High School and Swarthmore College before dropping out to be a poet in Manhattan. She was "a second generation American of Italian descent" and her maternal grandfather, Domenico Mallozzi, was an active anarchist, and associate of Carlo Tresca and Emma Goldman.

Di Prima began writing as a child and by the age of 19 was corresponding with Ezra Pound and Kenneth Patchen. Her first book of poetry, This Kind of Bird Flies Backward, was published in 1958 by Hettie Jones and LeRoi Jones' Totem Press.

Di Prima spent the late 1950s and early 1960s in Manhattan, where she participated in the emerging Beat movement. She spent some time in California at Stinson Beach and Topanga Canyon, returned to New York City and eventually moved to San Francisco permanently. Di Prima was a bridge figure between the Beat movement and the later hippies, as well as between East Coast and West Coast artists.

She edited the newspaper The Floating Bear with Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and was co-founder of the New York Poets Theatre and founder of the Poets Press.

On several occasions she faced charges of obscenity by the United States government due to her work with the New York Poets Theatre and The Floating Bear. In 1961 she was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for publishing two poems in The Floating Bear.

According to di Prima, police persistently harassed her due to the nature of her poetry. In 1966, she spent some time at Millbrook with Timothy Leary's psychedelic community and printed the first two editions of "Psychedelic Prayers" by Leary in Spring 1966.

In 1969, she wrote a fictionalized, erotic account detailing her experience in the Beat movement titled Memoirs of a Beatnik. From 1974 to 1997, di Prima taught Poetry at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, of the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, sharing the program with fellow Beats Allen Ginsberg (co-founder of the program), William Burroughs, Gregory Corso and others. In 2001, she published Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years.

Michael McClure, the Beat poet, was born 88 years ago today

McClure in 1975

Photo by Frank Beacham

Michael McClure, the poet, was born 88 years ago today.

A poet, playwright, songwriter and novelist, McClure found fame as one of the five poets (including Allen Ginsberg and Philip Whalen) who read at the famous San Francisco Six Gallery reading in 1955.

The reading is described in barely fictionalized terms in Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums. He soon became a key member of the Beat Generation and is immortalized as "Pat McLear" in Kerouac's, Big Sur.

McClure's first book of poetry, Passage, was published in 1956 by small press publisher, Jonathan Williams. His poetry is heavily infused with an awareness of nature, especially in the animal consciousness that often lies dormant in mankind.

Not only an awareness of nature, but the poems are organized in an organic fashion, continuing with his appreciation of nature's purity.

Stan Brakhage, friend of McClure, stated in Chicago Review that: "McClure always, and more and more as he grows older, gives his reader access to the verbal impulses of his whole body's thought (as distinct from simply and only brain-think, as it is with most who write). He invents a form for the cellular messages of his, a form which will feel as if it were organic on the page; and he sticks with it across his life..."

McClure published eight books of plays and four collections of essays, including essays on Bob Dylan and the environment. His fourteen books of poetry include Jaguar Skies, Dark Brown, Huge Dreams, Rebel Lions, Rain Mirror and Plum Stones.

McClure famously read selections of his Ghost Tantra poetry series to the caged lions in the San Francisco Zoo. His work as a novelist includes the autobiographical The Mad Cub and The Adept.

On January 14, 1967, McClure read at the epochal Human Be-In event in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and transcended his Beat label to become an important member of the 1960s Hippie counterculture.

Barry Miles referred to McClure as "the Prince of the San Francisco Scene.”

McClure would later court controversy as a playwright with his play, The Beard. The play tells of a fictional encounter in the blue velvet of eternity between Billy the Kid and Jean Harlow and is a theatrical exploration of his "Meat Politics" theory, in which all human beings are "bags of meat."

McClure was a close friend of The Doors lead singer, Jim Morrison, and is generally acknowledged as having been responsible for promoting Morrison as a poet.

McClure performed spoken word poetry concerts with Doors keyboard player, Ray Manzarek, until Manzarek’s death in 2013.

McClure died of stroke-related complications on May 4, 2020, in Oakland, at the age of 87.

Here, McClure reads poetry to lions in San Francisco in this mini-documentary in 1966

Arthur Rimbaud, the French poet, was born 166 years ago today

Arthur Rimbaud, the French poet, was born 166 years ago today.

Born in Charleville, Ardennes, Rimbaud produced his works while still in his late teens — Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare" — and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 20.

As part of the decadent movement, Rimbaud influenced modern literature, music and arts, and prefigured surrealism. He was known to have been a libertine and a restless soul, traveling extensively on three continents before his death from cancer just after his 37th birthday.

Rimbaud's first poem to appear in print was "Les Étrennes des orphelins" ("The Orphans' New Year's Gift"), which was published in the January, 1870 issue of Revue pour tous.

Two weeks after his poem was printed, a new teacher, Georges Izambard, arrived at the Collège de Charleville. Izambard became Rimbaud's literary mentor and soon a close accord formed between professor and student and Rimbaud for a short time saw Izambard as a kind of older brother figure.

From late 1870, Rimbaud's behavior became outwardly provocative. He drank alcohol, spoke rudely, composed scatological poems, stole books from local shops and abandoned his characteristically neat appearance by allowing his hair to grow long.

Rimbaud was encouraged by friend and office employee, Charles Auguste Bretagne, to write to Paul Verlaine, an eminent Symbolist poet, after letters to other poets failed to garner replies.

Taking his advice, Rimbaud sent Verlaine two letters containing several of his poems, including the hypnotic, gradually shocking "Le Dormeur du Val" (The Sleeper in the Valley), in which certain facets of Nature are depicted and called upon to comfort an apparently sleeping soldier. Verlaine, who was intrigued by Rimbaud, sent a reply that stated, "Come, dear great soul. We await you; we desire you," along with a one-way ticket to Paris.

Rimbaud arrived in late September, 1871 at Verlaine's invitation and resided briefly in Verlaine's home.

Verlaine, who was married to the seventeen-year-old and pregnant, Mathilde Mauté, had recently left his job and taken up drinking. In later published recollections of his first sight of Rimbaud, Verlaine described him at the age of seventeen as having "the real head of a child, chubby and fresh, on a big, bony rather clumsy body of a still-growing adolescent, and whose voice, with a very strong Ardennes accent, that was almost a dialect, had highs and lows as if it were breaking."

Rimbaud and Verlaine began a short and torrid affair. Whereas Verlaine had likely engaged in prior homosexual experiences, it remains uncertain whether the relationship with Verlaine was Rimbaud's first. During their time together they led a wild, vagabond-like life spiced by absinthe and hashish.

They scandalized the Parisian literary coterie on account of the outrageous behavior of Rimbaud, the archetypical enfant terrible, who throughout this period continued to write strikingly visionary verse. The stormy relationship between Rimbaud and Verlaine eventually brought them to London in September, 1872, a period about which Rimbaud would later express regret.

During this time, Verlaine abandoned his wife and infant son — both of whom he had abused in his alcoholic rages. Rimbaud and Verlaine lived in considerable poverty, in Bloomsbury and in Camden Town, scraping a living mostly from teaching, in addition to an allowance from Verlaine's mother.

In February, 1891, Rimbaud developed what he initially thought was arthritis in his right knee. It failed to respond to treatment and became agonizingly painful, and by March, the state of his health forced him to prepare to return to France for treatment.

In Aden, Rimbaud consulted a British doctor who mistakenly diagnosed tubercular synovitis and recommended immediate amputation. His right leg was amputated in May. The post-operative diagnosis was cancer. He died in Marseilles on November 10, 1891 at the age of 37.

Rimbaud's poetry, as well as his life, made an indelible impression on 20th century writers, musicians and artists. Pablo Picasso, Dylan Thomas, Allen Ginsberg, Vladimir Nabokov, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Giannina Braschi, Léo Ferré, Henry Miller, Van Morrison and Jim Morrison have been influenced by his poetry and life.

Illustration above of Rimbaud by Ernest Pignon-Ernest

e.e. Cummings was born 126 years ago today

Photo by Marion Morehouse

e.e. Cummings, the American poet, painter, essayist, author and playwright, was born 126 years ago today.

Cummings’ body of work encompasses approximately 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays and several essays, as well as numerous drawings and paintings. He is remembered as a preeminent voice of 20th century poetry.

Born into a Unitarian family, Cummings exhibited transcendental leanings his entire life. As he grew in maturity and age, Cummings moved more toward an "I, Thou" relationship with God.

His journals are replete with references to “le bon Dieu” as well as prayers for inspiration in his poetry and artwork (such as “Bon Dieu! may I some day do something truly great. amen.”).

Cummings "also prayed for strength to be his essential self ('may I be I is the only prayer—not may I be great or good or beautiful or wise or strong'), and for relief of spirit in times of depression ('almighty God! I thank thee for my soul; and may I never die spiritually into a mere mind through disease of loneliness')."

Cummings wanted to be a poet from childhood and wrote poetry daily aged eight to 22, exploring assorted forms. He went to Harvard and developed an interest in modern poetry which ignored conventional grammar and syntax, aiming for a dynamic use of language. On graduating, he worked for a book dealer.

In 1917, with the first world war ongoing in Europe, Cummings enlisted in the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps, along with his college friend, John Dos Passos.

Due to an administrative mix-up, Cummings was not assigned to an ambulance unit for five weeks, during which time he stayed in Paris. He fell in love with the city, to which he would return throughout his life.

During their service in the ambulance corps, they sent letters home that drew the attention of the military censors, and were known to prefer the company of French soldiers over fellow ambulance drivers.

The two openly expressed anti-war views; Cummings spoke of his lack of hatred for the Germans.

On September 21, 1917, just five months after his belated assignment, he and a friend, William Slater Brown, were arrested by the French military on suspicion of espionage and undesirable activities. They were held for three and half months in a military detention camp at the Dépôt de Triage, in La Ferté-Macé, Orne, Normandy.

They were imprisoned with other detainees in a large room. Cummings' father failed to obtain his son's release through diplomatic channels and in December, 1917 wrote a letter to President Wilson. Cummings was released on December 19, 1917, and Brown was released two months later.

Cummings used his prison experience as the basis for his novel, The Enormous Room (1922), about which F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "Of all the work by young men who have sprung up since 1920 one book survives — The Enormous Room by e e cummings....Those few who cause books to live have not been able to endure the thought of its mortality."

Cummings returned to the United States on New Year's Day, 1918. Later in 1918, he was drafted into the army. He served in the 12th Division at Camp Devens, Massachusetts, until November, 1918.

During the rest of the 1920s and 1930s, Cummings returned to Paris a number of times, and traveled throughout Europe, meeting, among others, Pablo Picasso.

In 1931, Cummings traveled to the Soviet Union, recounting his experiences in Eimi, published two years later. During these years, Cummings also traveled to Northern Africa and Mexico and worked as an essayist and portrait artist for Vanity Fair magazine (1924 to 1927).

In 1926, Cummings' father was killed in a car accident. Though severely injured, Cummings' mother survived. Cummings detailed the accident in the following passage from his i: six nonlectures series given at Harvard (as part of the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures) in 1952–1953:

“A locomotive cut the car in half, killing my father instantly. When two brakemen jumped from the halted train, they saw a woman standing – dazed but erect – beside a mangled machine; with blood spouting (as the older said to me) out of her head. One of her hands (the younger added) kept feeling her dress, as if trying to discover why it was wet.

These men took my sixty-six-year-old mother by the arms and tried to lead her toward a nearby farmhouse; but she threw them off, strode straight to my father's body, and directed a group of scared spectators to cover him. When this had been done (and only then) she let them lead her away.”

His father's death had a profound impact on Cummings, who entered a new period in his artistic life. He began to focus on more important aspects of life in his poetry. He began this new period by paying homage to his father's memory in the poem "my father moved through dooms of love."

Cummings died of a stroke on September 3, 1962, at the age of 67 in North Conway, New Hampshire at a hospital.

Here, Laurence Fishburne recites e.e. Cummings’ “Freedom Is a Breakfast Food” on Craig Ferguson’s show in 2009