Reed College
Reed College is a private liberal arts college in southeast Portland in the U. S. state of Oregon. Reed is known for its mandatory freshman humanities program, required senior-year thesis, the college has many prominent alumni, including over 90 Fulbright Scholars,67 Watson Fellows,3 MacArthur Fellows, and 32 Rhodes Scholars—the second-highest number of any liberal arts college. The Reed Institute was founded in 1908, and held its first classes in 1911, Reed is named for Oregon pioneers Simeon Gannett Reed and Amanda Reed. Simeon was an entrepreneur in trade on the Columbia River, Reeds first president was William Trufant Foster, a former professor at Bates College and Bowdoin College in Maine. The college has a reputation for political liberalism, according to sociologist Burton Clark, Reed is one of the most unusual institutions of higher learning in the United States, featuring a traditional liberal arts and natural sciences curriculum. It requires freshmen to take Humanities 110, an introduction to the Classics, covering ancient Greece and Rome as well as the Bible.
Its program in the sciences is likewise unusual with its TRIGA research reactor making it the school in the United States to have a nuclear reactor operated entirely by undergraduates. Upon completion of the thesis, students must pass an oral exam that may encompass questions not only about the thesis. Reed maintains a 10,1 student-to-faculty ratio, and its small classes emphasize a style where the teacher often acts as a mediator for discussion rather than a lecturer. While large lecture-style classes exist, Reed emphasizes its smaller lab, although letter grades are given to students, grades are de-emphasized at Reed and focus is placed on a narrative evaluation. Unsatisfactory grades are reported directly to the student and the students adviser and exams are generally returned to students with lengthy comments but without grades affixed. Many Reed students graduate without knowing their cumulative GPA or their grades in individual classes. Reed claims to have experienced very little grade inflation over the years, for example, although Reed does not award Latin honors to graduates, it confers several awards for academic achievement at commencement, including naming students to Phi Beta Kappa.
Reed has no fraternities or sororities and few NCAA sports teams although physical education classes are required for graduation, Reed has several intercollegiate athletic clubs, most notably the Rugby, Ultimate Frisbee, and Soccer teams. Reeds ethical code is known as The Honor Principle, while inspired by traditional honor systems, Reeds Honor Principle differs from these in that it is a guide for ethical standards themselves and not just their enforcement. Under the Honor Principle, there are no codified rules governing behavior, the onus is on students individually and as a community to define which behaviors are acceptable and which are not. Discrete cases of grievance, known as Honor Cases, are adjudicated by a Judicial Board of twelve full-time students, there is an Honor Council of students and staff who educate the community on the Honor Principle and mediate conflict between individuals. Reed categorizes its academic program into five Divisions and the Humanities program, the formal chronological cleavage between the graduate and the undergraduate attitude of mind
Counterculture of the 1960s
Many key movements related to these issues were born or advanced within the counterculture of the 1960s. This embracing of creativity is particularly notable in the works of British Invasion bands such as the Beatles, in addition to the trendsetting Beatles, many other creative artists and thinkers, within and across many disciplines, helped define the counterculture movement. Several factors distinguished the counterculture of the 1960s from the movements of previous eras. Post-war affluence allowed many of the generation to move beyond a focus on the provision of the material necessities of life that had preoccupied their Depression-era parents. The counterculture era essentially commenced in earnest with the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963, poor outcomes from some of these activities set the stage for disillusionment with, and distrust of, post-war governments. In the US, President Dwight D, the Partial Test Ban Treaty divided the establishment within the US along political and military lines.
In the UK, the Profumo Affair involved establishment leaders being caught in deception, leading to disillusionment and serving as a catalyst for liberal activism. The Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the world to the brink of war in October 1962, was largely fomented by duplicitous speech. The assassination of US President John F. Kennedy in November 1963, many social issues fueled the growth of the larger counterculture movement. On college and university campuses, student activists fought for the right to exercise their constitutional rights, especially freedom of speech. The availability of new and more effective forms of control was a key underpinning of the sexual revolution. With this change in attitude, by the 1990s the ratio of children out of wedlock rose from 5% to 25% for Whites. The end of censorship resulted in a reformation of the western film industry. Communes and intentional communities regained popularity during this era, Some of these self-sustaining communities have been credited with the birth and propagation of the international Green Movement.
The emergence of an interest in expanded spiritual consciousness, occult practices, in 1957, 69% of US residents polled by Gallup said religion was increasing in influence. By the late 1960s, polls indicated less than 20% still held that belief, the Generation Gap, or the inevitable perceived divide in worldview between the old and young, was perhaps never greater than during the counterculture era. Ultimately and comfortable casual apparel, namely updated forms of T-shirts, many began to live largely clandestine lives because of their choice to use such drugs and substances, fearing retribution from their governments. The confrontations between college students and law enforcement officials became one of the hallmarks of the era, many younger people began to show deep distrust of police, and terms such as fuzz and pig as derogatory epithets for police reappeared, and became key words within the counterculture lexicon
James Broughton
James Broughton was an American poet and poetic filmmaker. He was part of the San Francisco Renaissance, a precursor to the Beat poets and he was an early bard of the Radical Faeries as well as a member of The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, serving the community as Sister Sermonetta. Born to wealthy parents in Modesto, Broughton lost his early to the 1918 influenza epidemic. He spent his childhood in San Francisco and attended Stanford University until just before his class graduated in 1935, in 1945, he won the Alden Award given by the Stanford Dramatists Alliance for his original screenplay Summer Fury. But a more persistent sound, a kind of whirring whistle, I stood up in my crib and looked into the backyard. Over a neighbor’s palm tree a pulsing headlamp came whistling directly toward me, when it had whirled right up to my window, out of its radiance stepped a naked boy. He was at least three years older than I but he looked all ages at once and he had no wings, but I knew he was angel-sent, his laughing beauty illuminated the night and his melodious voice enraptured my ears….
If I followed the game enough, I could be a useful spokesman for Big Joy. In the book, Broughton remarks on his affairs with both men and women. Among his male lovers was gay activist Harry Hay and he briefly lived with the film critic Pauline Kael and they had a daughter, who was born in 1948. Broughton is the subject of the 2012 award-winning documentary film, Big Joy, ultimately I have learned more about poetry / from music and magic than from literature, he wrote. Cinema saved me from suicide when I was 32 by revealing to me a wondrous reality and this theme carried him through his 85 years. It was as important to live poetically as to write poems, suzanna’s theatrical background and personality made for a great playmate, they had two children. And they built a community among the creative spirits of Alan Watts, Michael McClure, Anna Halprin. In 1967’s summer of love, Broughton made a film, The Bed and it rekindled Broughton’s filmmaking and led to more tributes to the human body, the eternal child, the eternal return, the eternal moment, and the eternal feminine.
These eternalities praised the beauty of humans, the surprises of soul, Broughton repeatedly explored the temple of the human body – the Godbody – as a taproot for healing and peace, both for the individual and society. He developed a following, especially among students at the San Francisco Art Institute. In 2004, Singer wrote of their relationship and collaboration in White Crane
Ron Silliman
Ron Silliman is an American poet. He has written and edited over 30 books, and has had his poetry and he is often associated with language poetry. Between 1979 and 2004, Silliman wrote a poem, The Alphabet. He has now begun writing a new poem, the first section of which appears to be called Revelator, in the 1960s, Silliman attended Merritt College, San Francisco State University and the University of California, but left without attaining a degree. He lived in the San Francisco Bay area for more than 40 years, Silliman has worked as a political organizer, a lobbyist, an ethnographer, a newspaper editor, a director of development, and as the executive editor of the Socialist Review. Silliman worked as a market analyst in the industry before retiring at the end of 2011. Silliman classifies his poetry as part of a lifework, which he calls Ketjak Ketjak is the name of the first poem of The Age of Huts. If and when completed, the work will consist of The Age of Huts, The Alphabet. In 1995 Silliman moved to Chester County, where he resides with his wife Krishna, although he has come to be associated with the Language poets for most of his career, Silliman came of age under the sign of Donald Allens New American Poetry.
Regarding the latter publication, hes said that it is, unquestionably the most influential single anthology of the last century, it’s a great book, an epoch-making one in many ways. Silliman was first published in Berkeley in 1965, in the 1960s he was published by journals associated with what he calls the School of Quietude, such as Poetry Northwest, TriQuarterly, Southern Review and Poetry. Silliman thought that such early acceptance was less a recognition of his skills than a lack of standards or rigor characteristic of that literary tendency, he began looking for alternatives. Some of these alternatives were initiated through various editing projects that he took part in, one of the more influential projects was Sillimans newsletter called Tottels, that was one of the early venues for Language Poetry. He says that The Dwelling Place, an article on nine poets published in Alcheringa, was his first attempt to write about language poetry. In 1976 and 1977, he co-curated a reading series with Tom Mandel, at the Grand Piano, nearly three decades later, some of the poets who took part in this series were still collaborating on a work based on these readings.
This collaboration became part of what was called an experiment in collective autobiography, when the project was completed, it consisted of 10 volumes in all. The other nine writers included were Bob Perelman, Barrett Watten, Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, Tom Mandel, Kit Robinson, Lyn Hejinian, Rae Armantrout, rom 1976 to 1979 the authors took part in a reading and performance series. The writing project, begun in 1998, was undertaken as a collaboration, first via an interactive web site
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley, is a public research university located in Berkeley, California. In 1960s, UC Berkeley was particularly noted for the Free Speech Movement as well as the Anti-Vietnam War Movement led by its students. S, Department of Energy, and is home to many world-renowned research institutes and organizations including Mathematical Sciences Research Institute and Space Sciences Laboratory. Faculty member J. R. Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, Lawrence Livermore Lab discovered or co-discovered six chemical elements. The Academic Ranking of World Universities ranks the University of California, third in the world overall, in 1866, the private College of California purchased the land comprising the current Berkeley campus. Ten faculty members and almost 40 students made up the new University of California when it opened in Oakland in 1869, billings was a trustee of the College of California and suggested that the college be named in honor of the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkeley.
In 1870, Henry Durant, the founder of the College of California, with the completion of North and South Halls in 1873, the university relocated to its Berkeley location with 167 male and 22 female students and held its first classes. In 1905, the University Farm was established near Sacramento, ultimately becoming the University of California, by the 1920s, the number of campus buildings had grown substantially, and included twenty structures designed by architect John Galen Howard. Robert Gordon Sproul served as president from 1930 to 1958, by 1942, the American Council on Education ranked UC Berkeley second only to Harvard University in the number of distinguished departments. During World War II, following Glenn Seaborgs then-secret discovery of plutonium, UC Berkeley physics professor J. Robert Oppenheimer was named scientific head of the Manhattan Project in 1942. Along with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley is now a partner in managing two other labs, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, military training was compulsory for male undergraduates, and Berkeley housed an armory for that purpose.
In 1917, Berkeleys ROTC program was established, and its School of Military Aeronautics trained future pilots, including Jimmy Doolittle, both Robert McNamara and Frederick C. Weyand graduated from UC Berkeleys ROTC program, earning B. A. degrees in 1937 and 1938, in 1926, future fleet admiral Chester W. Nimitz established the first Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps unit at Berkeley. The Board of Regents ended compulsory military training at Berkeley in 1962, during the McCarthy era in 1949, the Board of Regents adopted an anti-communist loyalty oath. A number of faculty members objected and were dismissed, ten years passed before they were reinstated with back pay, in 1952, the University of California became an entity separate from the Berkeley campus. Each campus was given autonomy and its own Chancellor. Then-president Sproul assumed presidency of the entire University of California system, Berkeley gained a reputation for student activism in the 1960s with the Free Speech Movement of 1964 and opposition to the Vietnam War.
In the highly publicized Peoples Park protest in 1969, students and the school conflicted over use of a plot of land, governor of California Ronald Reagan called the Berkeley campus a haven for communist sympathizers and sex deviants. Modern students at Berkeley are less active, with a greater percentage of moderates and conservatives
San Francisco
San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural and financial center of Northern California. It is the birthplace of the United Nations, the California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856, after three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. Politically, the city votes strongly along liberal Democratic Party lines, San Francisco is the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co. Dolby, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Pinterest, Uber, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation, as of 2016, San Francisco is ranked high on world liveability rankings.
The earliest archaeological evidence of habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the system gradually ended, and its lands became privatized. In 1835, Englishman William Richardson erected the first independent homestead, together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, and the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7,1846, during the Mexican–American War, montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography. The California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers, with their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849.
The promise of fabulous riches was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor. Some of these approximately 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships and hotels, many were left to rot, by 1851 the harbor was extended out into the bay by wharves while buildings were erected on piles among the ships. By 1870 Yerba Buena Cove had been filled to create new land, buried ships are occasionally exposed when foundations are dug for new buildings. California was quickly granted statehood in 1850 and the U. S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate, silver discoveries, including the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, further drove rapid population growth. With hordes of fortune seekers streaming through the city, lawlessness was common, and the Barbary Coast section of town gained notoriety as a haven for criminals, entrepreneurs sought to capitalize on the wealth generated by the Gold Rush
San Francisco State University
1899 – Founded as San Francisco State Normal School. 1901 – First graduating class 1906 – The 1906 earthquake and fire forces the school to relocate from Nob Hill to a new campus at Buchanan and Haight Streets. 1966 – Beginning of the era of protests led by student organizations including the Black Students Union, Third World Liberation Front. The protests against college policies and off-campus issues such as the Vietnam War included sit-ins, marches, teach-ins, the protests were marked by counter-protests and widespread charges of corruption and election fraud in the student newspaper. 1968 – A lengthy student strike erupted that developed into an important event in the history of the U. S. in the late 1960s. The strike was led by the Black Student Union and the Third World Liberation Front and this became a major news event for weeks in the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. At one point, University president S. I. Hayakawa famously pulled the out of the speakers on top of a van at a student rally.
During the course of the strike, large numbers of police drawn from many jurisdictions occupied the campus, SF State is on the semester system. The university awards degrees in 115 areas of specialization, masters degrees in 97. SFSU ranks 18th among the top 20 undergraduate schools whose alumni go on to be admitted to the State Bar, the Cinema department, in the College of Liberal & Creative Arts, was named one of the nations top film schools by Entertainment Weekly in 2000. The university is accredited by the Accrediting Commission for Senior Colleges and Universities, the College of Business is accredited by The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. The college of engineering is accredited by the ABET except the computer engineering program, San Francisco State was ranked the 24th top college in the United States by Payscale and CollegeNets Social Mobility Index college rankings. Among Western Universities, of which there are 112, San Francisco State was ranked 10th in terms of diversity by USNWR.
Furthermore, U. S. News & World Report ranks San Francisco State as 8th nationally in the number of transfer students, San Francisco State Universitys joint physical therapy masters program with UCSF is consistently ranked among the top 20 in the country. The Philosophical Gourmet Report lists San Francisco State University as one of the top eight universities to earn a terminal MA in philosophy, SFSU is listed as having one of the nations top film schools by Entertainment Weekly having produced countless leading filmmakers. The Universitys College of Extended Learning offers the only American Bar Association-approved paralegal studies program in San Francisco, SFSU was one of the first California State University campuses to offer a doctorate of education. It was instrumental in the establishment of the International University Of Kyrgyzstan, the University is the only one in California to offer a bachelors degree in technical and professional writing. In 1968, what was the longest student strike in the nations history resulted in establishment of a College of Ethnic Studies and increased recruiting, in 2002 there was much tension between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian students
Ralph J. Gleason
Ralph Joseph Gleason was an American jazz and popular music critic. He contributed for many years to the San Francisco Chronicle, was an editor of Rolling Stone magazine. A pioneering rock critic, he helped the San Francisco Chronicle transition into the rock era, Gleason was born in New York City and graduated from Columbia University in 1938. During World War II he worked for the Office of War Information, in 1947, he moved to San Francisco and began contributing to the San Francisco Chronicle in 1950, initiating the first regular coverage of jazz and pop music in the mainstream US media. Gleason was the first critic to review folk and jazz concerts with the same attention and he interviewed such luminaries as Frank Sinatra, Hank Williams, Elvis Presley, and Fats Domino. Gleason was one of the first critics to perceive the importance of Lenny Bruce, Bob Dylan and his liner notes for the 1959 Sinatra album No One Cares and for the 1970 Davis album Bitches Brew set the standard for the form.
In the 1960s, Gleason was a respected commentator and he chose to write supportively of the better cut of the Bay Area rock bands, such as Jefferson Airplane. However, Gleason was sometimes criticized for minimizing the importance of or simply ignoring acts from Los Angeles, but others judged that he was making a valid distinction between works of creative vitality and music business product. In any case, Gleason was a key contributor to the growth and range of San Francisco regions vibrant music scene of the 1960s and after. Gleason was an editor to Ramparts, a prominent leftist magazine based in San Francisco. With Jann Wenner, another Ramparts staffer, Gleason founded the music magazine, Rolling Stone. For ten years, he wrote syndicated weekly columns on jazz and pop music. For twelve years, he was an editor and critic for the leading jazz publication. The series ran from 1961 to 1968 and he produced a two-hour documentary on Duke Ellington, which was twice nominated for an Emmy. Gleasons name shows up in tribute on Red Garlands Ralph J.
Gleason Blues from the 1958 recording Red Garland Quartet, Gleasons lasting legacy, however, is his work with Rolling Stone. His name, alongside that of Hunter S. Thompson, still remains on the masthead today. An Anthology of Jazz, Peter Davies Pub, the Jefferson Airplane and the San Francisco Sound, Ballantine Books Celebrating the Duke and Louie, Billie, Carmen, Dizzy & Others, Atlantic-Little, Brown. ISBN 0-306-80645-2 Conversations in Jazz, The Ralph J. Gleason Interviews and this generation is producing poets who write songs, and never before in the sixty-year history of American popular music has this been true
Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated amongst African Americans in New Orleans, United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and developed from roots in Blues and Ragtime. Since the 1920s jazz age, jazz has become recognized as a form of musical expression. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes and response vocals, Jazz has roots in West African cultural and musical expression, and in African-American music traditions including blues and ragtime, as well as European military band music. Although the foundation of jazz is deeply rooted within the Black experience of the United States, different cultures have contributed their own experience, intellectuals around the world have hailed jazz as one of Americas original art forms. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on different national and local musical cultures, New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass-band marches, French quadrilles, biguine and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation.
In the 1930s, heavily arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz, bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging musicians music which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed in the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, modal jazz developed in the late 1950s, using the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock rhythms, electric instruments. In the early 1980s, a form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful. Other styles and genres abound in the 2000s, such as Latin, the question of the origin of the word jazz has resulted in considerable research, and its history is well documented. It is believed to be related to jasm, a term dating back to 1860 meaning pep. The use of the word in a context was documented as early as 1915 in the Chicago Daily Tribune.
Its first documented use in a context in New Orleans was in a November 14,1916 Times-Picayune article about jas bands. In an interview with NPR, musician Eubie Blake offered his recollections of the slang connotations of the term, When Broadway picked it up. That was dirty, and if you knew what it was, the American Dialect Society named it the Word of the Twentieth Century. Jazz has proved to be difficult to define, since it encompasses such a wide range of music spanning a period of over 100 years. Attempts have been made to define jazz from the perspective of other musical traditions, in the opinion of Robert Christgau, most of us would say that inventing meaning while letting loose is the essence and promise of jazz. As Duke Ellington, one of jazzs most famous figures, although jazz is considered highly difficult to define, at least in part because it contains so many varied subgenres, improvisation is consistently regarded as being one of its key elements
Jack Spicer
Jack Spicer was an American poet often identified with the San Francisco Renaissance. In 2009, My Vocabulary Did This to Me, The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer won the American Book Award for poetry, Spicer was born in Los Angeles, where he graduated from Fairfax High School in 1942, and attended the University of Redlands from 1943-45. The three, who were all gay, educated younger poets in their circle about their queer genealogy, Lorca, Spicers poetry of this period is collected in One Night Stand and Other Poems. His Imaginary Elegies, collected in Donald Allens The New American Poetry 1945-1960 anthology, were written around this time. In 1954, he co-founded the Six Gallery in San Francisco, in 1955, Spicer moved to New York City and to Boston, where he worked for a time in the Rare Book Room of Boston Public Library. Blaser was in Boston at this time, and the pair made contact with a number of poets, including John Wieners, Stephen Jonas. Spicer returned to San Francisco in 1956 and started working on After Lorca and this book represented a major change in direction for two reasons.
Firstly, he came to the conclusion that stand-alone poems were unsatisfactory, in fact, he wrote to Blaser that all my stuff from the past looks foul to me. Secondly, in writing After Lorca, he began to practice what he called poetry as dictation and his interest in the work of Federico García Lorca, especially as it involved the cante jondo ideal, brought him near the poetics of the deep image group. The Troilus referred to was Spicers unpublished play of that name, the play finally appeared in print in 2004, edited by Aaron Kunin, in issue 3 of No - A Journal of the Arts. In 1957, Spicer ran a workshop called Poetry as Magic at San Francisco State College, which was attended by Duncan, Helen Adam, James Broughton, Joe Dunn, Jack Gilbert, and George Stanley. He participated in, and sometimes hosted, Blabbermouth Night at a bar called The Place. This was a kind of contest of improvised poetry and encouraged Spicers view of poetry as being dictated to the poet, as such, Spicer is acknowledged as a precursor and early inspiration for the Language poets.
However, many working poets today list Spicer in their succession of precedent figures, Spicer died as a result of his alcoholism. Since the posthumous publication of The Collected Books of Jack Spicer, his popularity and influence has steadily risen, affecting poetry throughout the United States, Canada, in 1994, The Tower of Babel, Jack Spicers Detective Novel was published. A collected works entitled My Vocabulary Did This to Me, The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer was published by Wesleyan University Press in November 2008, a collection of critical essays entitled After Spicer, Critical Essays was published by Wesleyan University Press in 2011. The Collected Books of Jack Spicer, black Sparrow Press,1975 A Book Of Correspondences For Jack Spicer. Edited By David Levi Strauss and Benjamin Hollander, San Francisco, A Journal of Acts,1987, Diaman, N. A
Helen Adam
Helen Adam was a Scottish poet and photographer who was part of a literary movement contemporaneous to the Beat Generation that occurred in San Francisco during the 1950s and 1960s. Though often associated with the Beat poets, she would more accurately be considered one of the predecessors of the Beat Generation, from Kristin Prevallet, In a dark forest, a woman in a white strapless evening gown is stiffly toppling into the arms of a gigantic tarantula. One of her arms is nestled comfortably between the strong, hairy forearms, and she appears comfortable with the monstrosity that is cuddling her. In another scene two bats are attached to the sleeve of an elegant ladys gown, dangling as if a part of her ensemble, the society debutantes around her appear to be oblivious to the grotesque attachment. The lady does have a slightly uncomfortable expression on her face, she is worried that her private passions will be discovered by the outside world. She reassures herself, perhaps no one will notice them, as in all of the collages of Helen Adam, the true desires of women are fulfilled not by mortal men, but by highly charged encounters with unhuman beings.
Born in Scotland in 1909, Adam primarily wrote supernatural ballads which tell of fatal romances, darkly sadistic sexual affairs, jealous lovers and her collages arise from these ballads, and animate what she called her lethal women. Jesss collages are a myriad of images, fitted like pieces of a puzzle which come together to form one visionary grande-collage, when compared to Jesss collages, Adams are strikingly simple. They combine two images—a beautiful man or woman, and a creature, Adam was a precocious poet, her first book, The Elfin Pedlar, was published in 1923, when the poet was fourteen years old. That book was in the Victorian genre of light verse about fairies and her early books were well known and widely reviewed, the composer Sir Charles Villiers Stanford set selections from The Elfin Pedlar to orchestral music, and performed them widely. Adam attended Edinburgh University for two years, after leaving Edinburgh University she worked as a journalist in London. In 1939 she moved to the United States and eventually moved to San Francisco, in San Francisco she worked with such influential poets as Allen Ginsberg and Robert Duncan.
One of the oldest of the poets in the San Francisco Renaissance, she worked closely with Duncan, Madeline Gleason and she encouraged many of the Beat poets as they began to explore performance and writing as an art form. Helen Adam and her sister collaborated on an opera entitled San Franciscos Burning which was published in 1963 and reissued in 1985 with score by Al Carmines. A collection of her poems was collected in a work titled Selected Poems and she was one of only four women whose work was included in Donald Allens landmark anthology, The New American Poetry 1945-1960. Her life was a subject of a film directed by experimental film maker Rosa von Praunheim. Her papers are held at University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, I am young in the old city, My heart dead in my breast. I hear the bells in the sky crying, Every being is blest, in Amsterdam, that old city, Alone at a window I stand, A spangled garter my only clothing, A candle flame in my hand
Poetry
Poetry has a long history, dating back to the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. Early poems evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese Shijing, or from a need to retell oral epics, as with the Sanskrit Vedas, Zoroastrian Gathas, and the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Ancient attempts to define poetry, such as Aristotles Poetics, focused on the uses of speech in rhetoric, drama and comedy. Later attempts concentrated on such as repetition, verse form and rhyme. From the mid-20th century, poetry has sometimes been more generally regarded as a creative act employing language. Poetry uses forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretation to words, devices such as assonance, alliteration and rhythm are sometimes used to achieve musical or incantatory effects. The use of ambiguity, symbolism and other elements of poetic diction often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations. Similarly figures of such as metaphor and metonymy create a resonance between otherwise disparate images—a layering of meanings, forming connections previously not perceived.
Kindred forms of resonance may exist, between verses, in their patterns of rhyme or rhythm. Some poetry types are specific to cultures and genres and respond to characteristics of the language in which the poet writes. Much modern poetry reflects a critique of poetic tradition, playing with and testing, among other things, in todays increasingly globalized world, poets often adapt forms and techniques from diverse cultures and languages. Some scholars believe that the art of poetry may predate literacy, however, suggest that poetry did not necessarily predate writing. The oldest surviving poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, comes from the 3rd millennium BCE in Sumer. An example of Egyptian epic poetry is The Story of Sinuhe, other forms of poetry developed directly from folk songs. The earliest entries in the oldest extant collection of Chinese poetry, the efforts of ancient thinkers to determine what makes poetry distinctive as a form, and what distinguishes good poetry from bad, resulted in poetics—the study of the aesthetics of poetry.
Some ancient societies, such as Chinas through her Shijing, developed canons of poetic works that had ritual as well as aesthetic importance, Classical thinkers employed classification as a way to define and assess the quality of poetry. Later aestheticians identified three major genres, epic poetry, lyric poetry, and dramatic poetry, treating comedy and tragedy as subgenres of dramatic poetry, Aristotles work was influential throughout the Middle East during the Islamic Golden Age, as well as in Europe during the Renaissance. English Romantic poet John Keats termed this escape from logic Negative Capability and this romantic approach views form as a key element of successful poetry because form is abstract and distinct from the underlying notional logic
