Worshipping at the Shrine of the Beat

San Francisco, they say, is the literary mecca of the United States, or at least, that of the Western Pacific seaboard. And deep in the heart of San Francisco, admist the tourists and seed of North Beach, lies the holy Kaaba of American literature, City Lights Bookshop. This is the place where the Beat Poets gathered, condensed, and poured forth a unique stream of writings.

Alas, the most famous of the Beat Poets have passed on, Kerouac, Bukowski. Yet there are some that are left. The other night, I went to my first reading at City Lights. It was advertised as a gala event, a poetry recital from Gary Snyder, one of the surviving Beats. Surprisingly, this, was the first time Gary had been invited to read at City Lights. His poetry is suffused through with the terse and concrete quality of Zen. Indeed, Snyder explained that he spoke fluent Japanese and had spent 10 years in Japan. Yet, his is not a blind devotion. When asked about the haiku form by a young lad (who wanted to know because, he, the young lad wearing a hat and waistcoat, had written many haiku's in his past, but that now, he just stopped and wanted to know why - don't make me puke), Snyder answered that a haiku doesn't really work in English, the play of grammar in haiku is unique to the Japanese. Nevertheless, he admires the concision of haiku's, and that, he brings to his poetry. His concerns are epic, mountains, volcanoes, life, death and the burning towers of new york. I was almost brought to tears.

I had not realised how popular the reading was going to be. When I arrived, the door had just closed as there were so many people that they would have spilled onto the street. Having nothing better to do, I hung around outside. And sure enough, some weak-willed folks walked out before the event started and so I managed to be one of the last to sneak in. I squeezed into the hordes of people crammed into that bookshop, sandwiched between the books, listening to the Poet. It was so tight that my leg was starting to go dead from my awkard stance. I could feel the breathing of the person in front of me. I dared not move for fear of falling over someone. But at some point during the recital, during a moment when I got lost in the poetry, I realised that I had achieved communion with the fibrous vastness of the American imagination.