Collects the commentary of the later years and last days of one of America's most powerful and unique poets

'[This] survey of the many little magazines carrying the Beat message is impressive in its coverage, drawing attention to the importance of their paratextual content in providing valuable socio-political context. [...] The collection contains a range of insightful close readings, astute contextualizing, and inventive lateral pedagogical thinking, charting the transformation of the Beat scene from its free-wheeling, self-help, heady revolutionary 1960’s days to its contemporary position as an increasingly respectable component of the curriculum. [...] The Beats: A Teaching Companion is successful on a number of levels; it is a noteworthy contribution to the ever expanding field of Beat studies and, more broadly, cultural studies; and it is a collection that at its best gives hope that in referring to its ideas the inspired teacher may still be able to enlarge the lives of their students.' John Shapcott, Keele University

Avant-garde poet and popular culture icon, Allen Ginsberg has been one of the world's most important writers for over 40 years. This comprehensive bibliography, covering the years 1941 to 1994, was prepared with the cooperation of the poet himself. All books, periodicals, photographs, recordings, films, and miscellaneous appearances are listed here. Entries are grouped in chapters according to type of work, and each entry provides full descriptive bibliographic information. Allen Ginsberg is perhaps the most famous poet of our time, as well as one of our most prolific writers. His subjects range from Buddhist studies to drug research to gay rights to political issues of every description from Vietnam to censorship. Ginsberg gave the author access to personal files and, as a result, every appearance of Ginsberg's writings in the English language is noted. This bibliography is a comprehensive, descriptive record of all of Ginsberg's works. The volume contains descriptive annotations of every book, pamphlet, and broadside by Ginsberg. It also contains complete descriptions of every contribution by Ginsberg to the works of others. In addition, all periodical contributions, recordings, films, and miscellaneous publications are listed. Due to Ginsberg's recent acceptance as a photographer of note, a special section identifies all of his published photographs. Entries are arranged in chapters according to the type of work, to facilitate ease of use. As a result, this book presents a history of Ginsberg's works and traces the evolution of his writings over a period of publications and revisions.

The hero of this American gothic nightmare comedy is a messianic hillbilly prophet whose onetime local glory as a high school football star gives way to a career of outlaw questing. With the mysterious disappearance of his main squeeze--an edgy, spooky honkytonk chanteuse--that quest becomes increasingly deviant and deranged. The landscape through which the earnest, confused seeker chivvies his banged-up black pickup truck is a magical and timeless one, its dense woods and dark lakes charged with a heavy burden of industrially-produced hexes, curses and toxic spells. Mechanical animals and changeling species, subjected to continual torments of re-programming, run half wild through a menacing backwater of poisonous tarns, vicious factories and slimy swamps. Elders of strange religions exercise insidious, unpleasant influences, while witches in Secret Shacks broadcast bad vibrations that produce genetic alterations. In this mutated vision of reality, there is a general spell under which everybody is bound. The Spell: A Romance is a haunting and funny poetic novel about the survival of medieval chivalric codes--and their dangerous implications--in a toxic-shocked modern world. It is also a tale of love and quest, betrayal and revenge. The mysterious protean voice of the book slips back and forth from comic narrative prose to spare lyrical poetry as it becomes the voice of legend: allusive, expansive, suspending disbelief.