Beat generation/ Γενιά των Μπίτ

Beat generation flourished around '50-'60 and its heart was in San Francisco.  It is actually a reaction to the second World War. After the war the poets question the state, the conformity and as a consequence the traditional forms of poetry. They want to change consciousness and in order to achieve a higher one, they take drugs. They were assumed in general rebels and we can say that their poetry is the ancestor of modern street performance poetry.
The father of beat poetry is assumed to be Ginsberg. The above characteristics can be found in the examples below.

Bowery Blues

The story of man
Makes me sick
Inside, outside,
I don't know why
Something so conditional
And all talk
Should hurt me so.

I am hurt
I am scared
I want to live
I want to die
I don't know
Where to turn
In the Void
And when
To cut
Out
              Jack Kerouac


Brooklyn Narcissus



                       Straight rye whiskey, 100 proof
                       you need a better friend?
                       Yes.        Myself.

The lights
the lights
the lonely        lovely      fucking       lights
and the bridge on a rainy Tuesday night
Blue/green double-stars      the line
that is the drive and on the dark alive
gleaming river
Xmas trees of tugs scream and struggle

                                   Midnite

Drops on the train window wobble  .  stream
                                         My trouble
                                                              is
it is her fate to never learn to make
                                             anything grow
                                   be born or stay
Harbor beginnings and that other gleam

                                  Paul Blackburn

Howl
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical
     naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry
     dynamo in the machinery of night . . .
                                                                          Allen Ginsberg

Last Night I Drove A Car

Last night I drove a car

 Gregory Corso

Ka 'Ba

We have been captured,
brothers. And we labor
to make our getaway, into
the ancient image, into a new

correspondence with ourselves
and our black family. We read magic
now we need the spells, to rise up
return, destroy, and create. What will be

the sacred words?

 Imamu Amiri Baraka

Η γενιά των μπιτ άνθισε το 50-60 με επίκεντρο το Σαν Φραντσίσκο. Είναι μια αντίδραση στο δεύτερο Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο. Μετα το πόλεμο οι ποιητές αμφισβήτησαν το κράτος, το συμβιβασμό και ως εκ τουτου τις παραδοσιακές μορφές της ποίησης. Θέλουν να αλλάξουν συνειδήσεις και για να το πετύχουν παίρνουν ναρκωτικά. Θεωρούνται αναρχικοί και πρόγονοι της σύγχρονης ποίησης του δρόμου.
Ο πατέρας της μπίτ είναι ο Γκίνσμπεργκ. Ολα αυτά τα χαρακτηριστικά βρίσκονται στα παρακάτω αποσπάσματα.