Jan Herman

It's a wonder that the most intriguing publisher of American poets of the Beat Generation happens to be a German publisher, Stadtlichter Presse. Its "Heartbeat" series features not only the most notable Beats — Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Corso, and Ferlinghetti — in bilingual editions, but dozens of less famous Beats and Beat-era or Beat-related eminences as well.

In my generation's war, our peaceful protests kept the peace the best we could — yet could not.

If poetry make nothing happen, as W.H. Auden once wrote, it sometimes uncannily anticipates what will.

Sometimes he rewrote them. See an example and decide which you prefer: the early or the later version.

Colin Asher, author of the critically acclaimed biography of Nelson Algren "Never a Lovely So Real," now focuses on five emblematic figures — Huddle Ledbetter, Elmo Hope, Johnny Cash, Ike White, and Tupac Shakur — as he explores the influence of incarceration on blues artists, jazz musicians, country singers, rock'n'rollers,