History
World War II left much of the world with a sense that a change was in order. While much of America was embracing the classic 50's "white picket fence" ideal lifestyle, there were some who began to question mainstream culture and politics and that included poets such as Allen Ginsburg, Gary Snyder and Lawrence Ferlinghetti among many others. Beat poetry has it roots in the 1940's in New York City and on the west coast but by the early 1950's it was mostly associated with San Francisco. The term Beat Generation is said to have been coined by Jack Kerouac in 1948 and was meant to describe a generation that had been beaten down. But "more than weariness, it implies the feeling of having been used, of being raw" (This is the Beat Generation). Beat poetry is about "the feeling of being reduced to the bedrock of consciousness," and the rejection of social conformity and literary traditions (This is the Beat Generation). Lots of Beat poets used recreational drugs, especially hallucinogens to "achieve higher consciousness." Some also used meditation and studied Eastern religions to do this, "Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsburg both intensely studied [Buddhism] and it figured into much of their work" (poets.org). Allen Ginsburg, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs are the people most commonly associated with the Beat Generation while Ferlinghetti's City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco is its most prominent landmark.
