English Department’s Beat Night offers students a chance to enjoy the Beat Era
Logan and San Francisco might not have a lot in common beyond their lack of quality parking spaces downtown. However, both are connected to the Beat poetry spirit and tradition.
Tonight at 8 p.m. in The Skyroom, USU will have its first Beat Night, celebrating both great beat poetry of the past and the spirit of beat poetry today.
The first hour of the event will feature readings of famous Beat authors from the past such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Anne Waldman along with improvised jazz accompaniment by the USU Jazz Combo. The second hour will be an open-mic session for people to read their own work.
The event was designed to have the feel of a Beat café from the 1950s that was popularized again in the 1993 movie “So I Married an Axe Murderer,” said Ann Marie Wallace, an event planner at the University Inn who helped put the Beat Night together. Along with the music, she said the jazz music and drinks for the evening would help give the evening a Beat feel.
All attendees of the event will receive a mug custom made for the event by the USU pottery guild and bottomless drinks of coffee from Café Ibis as well as tea and hot chocolate provided by USU Catering.
The event is designed to be accessible and interesting a wide audience, said Sarah Stoeckl, a member of the planning committee and one of the readers for the event. “We really wanted to take it out of the English Department,” said Stoeckl, a graduate student in English. “Anybody can write Beat poetry.”
The Beat poetry movement began in the 1950s by a group of writers and poets dedicated to a carefree, anti-establishment approach to poetry, according to the Beat Page, an educational Web site dedicated to Beat poetry. “The point of Beat is that you get down to a certain nakedness where you are actually able to see the world in a visionary way,” said poet Allen Ginsberg as reported in “Dharma Lion,” a biography on him.
The spirit of Beat improvisation will be reflected in the USU Jazz Combo’s jazz accompaniment to the Beat readings. Tyler Whittaker, a junior music education major, said the Jazz Combo has had no rehearsals for Beat Night.
“Everything we do is going to be on the spot and made up right there that night,” said Whittaker.
“Anytime you improvise, you never know what will happen, which is exciting,” Whittaker added.
USU has connections to the Beat poetry tradition beyond this Friday’s concert. The Merrill-Cazier Library houses one of the nation’s premiere collections of vintage Beat poetry in its archives collections section, said Star Coulbrooke, Beat Night committee chair and assistant director of the USU Writing Center. Additionally, Wallace said Logan once had its own Beat café at the height of the Beat movement.
Coulbrooke said Beat poetry is particularly relevant in the world today. “Right now in our country, there are a lot of things that are pressing on people. There is more and more need for self expression,” she said. “The more restrictive and repressive and the same things become, the more people want to break out of that mode.”
Beat Night is a collaboration between the University Inn, USU Writing Center, Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Café Ibis and several different departments on campus.
Tickets for Beat Night are $3 if purchased in advance or $5 if purchased at the door. Advance tickets can be purchased at the Writing Center in Ray B. West Room 104, Citrus & Sage Café on 130 N. 100 East, or at the University Inn. The Beat Night mug is included with the price of the ticket.
-tliljegren@cc.usu.edu