The Beat poets, particularly Allen Ginsberg, really dug Walt Whitman. Why? Not only was he generally a super-sweet poet, he was the Granddaddy of free verse. Free verse is poetry that throws regula...

Modernist literature is more openly emotional, confessional, and disjointed than the stodgy stuff that came out of the Victorian Era. It was spurred by the rapid development of new technologie...

Well, this one's easy. Transgressive fiction and poetry is exactly what you think it is: literature that's dirty, down-low, obscene, shocking, illegal, or just plain strange. The Beats wanted...

A lot of people write about alienation because they feel alienated by others. Like, that nameless narrator in Invisible Man. But most of the Beats were white guys from privileged backgrounds. What...

When people say Californians are chill, they ain't lyin'. After the Beats escape New York and end up in San Francisco, they all catch the Buddhism bug. Eastern religious studies were all the rage a...

The Beats were going to be their own men no matter the cost. You might say they marched to the beat of their own drum (haha, we're hilarious). And then turned the drum upside down and planted tomat...

When it came to sex, the question is: what didn't the Beats do? Well, have "vanilla," monogamous sex with their married, forever-wives, we guess. In other words, there were no nuclear families anyw...

After World War II and the Korean War, Americans were pretty biased against people in East Asia. The Beats hated this prejudice. They championed eastern Buddhist thought not just because they found...

Take a look at our "Top 10" for more deets on jazz. For now, take a look at some of the authors and texts associated with it.

Take a look at our "Top 10" for more deets on obscenity in Beat literature. For now, take a look at some of the authors and texts associated with it.

Take a look at our "Top 10" for more deets on the confessional in Beat literature. For now, take a look at some of the authors and texts associated with it.