Featuring: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gary Snyder, Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso, Diane Di Prima, Bob Dylan, Ken Kesey, Charles Bukowski, Michael McClure, and more.

    Along with such visionaries as William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and Allen Ginsberg, Kerouac changed the face of American literature, igniting a counterculture revolution that even now, decades later, burns brighter than ever in Desolation Angels.In one of the major cinematic events of 2012, Jack Kerouac's legendary Beat classic, On the Road, finally hits the big screen. Directed by Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries; Paris, Je T'Aime) and with a cast of some of Hollywood's biggest young stars, including Kristen Stewart (The Twilight Saga), Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund, Kirsten Dunst, Amy Adams (Julie & Julia, The Fighter), Tom Sturridge, and Viggo Mortensen (the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Road), the film will attract new fans who will be inspired by Kerouac's revolutionary writing.

    Writing with an audacious swagger and an iconoclastic zeal, and declaiming their verse with dramatic flourish in smoke-filled cafés, the Beats gave birth to a literature of previously unimaginable expressive range.The defining work of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac provides the foundation for this collection, which also features the improvisational verse of such Beat legends as Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, and Michael McClure and the work of such women writers as Diane DiPrima and Denise Levertov. LeRoi Jones’s plaintive “Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note” and Bob Kaufman’s stirring “Abomunist Manifesto” appear here alongside statements on poetics and the alternately incendiary and earnest correspondence of Beat Generation writers. Visceral and powerful, infused with an unmediated spiritual and social awareness, this is a rich and varied tribute and, in the populist spirit of the Beats, a vital addition to the libraries of readers everywhere.

    People living happy lives, some not-so-happy lives, people in love, hopeless romantics, people dealing with heartbreak, the ones who believe life is better with a bit of whimsy, this book, hopefully, has a little something that resonates with everybody, lets the reader find the silver lining when needed and discover the joie de vivre even when times are hard.

    One of the original Beat poets (the coinage "beatnik" is his), Kaufman’s work has always been essentially improvisational, often done to jazz accompaniment. And he became something of a legendary figure at the poetry readings in the early days of the San Francisco renaissance of the 1950s. With his extemporaneous technique, akin in many ways to Surrealist automatic writing, he has produced a body of work ranging from a visionary lyricism infused with satirical, almost Dadaistic elements to a prophetic poetry of political and social protest. Born in New Orleans of mixed Black and Jewish parentage, Kaufman was one of fourteen children. During twenty years in the Merchant Marine, he cultivated an intense taste for literature on his long sea voyages. Settling in California, in the ’50s, he became active in the burgeoning West Coast literary scene. Disappointment, drugs, and imprisonment led him to take a ten-year vow of complete silence that lasted until 1973. The present volume includes previously uncollected poems written prior to his pledge and newer work composed in the years 1973-1978, before the poet once again lapsed into silence.

    This book is unique among Gary Snyder’s numerable works, and the poems contained here are as broad in style as the compilation is in timeframe. With a new introduction by the author, Left Out in the Rain captures the evolution of the poet and the man.Readers will travel with Snyder from the American West to the Far East. From Berkeley to Kyoto, his imagery provides insight into the natural world as well as the human experience. With the span of a few words, Snyder can reveal a universe and then two pages later deftly handle a villanelle. Sensual, sardonic, meditative, epigrammatic, formalist—whatever the tone or structure, these poems all bear the indelible stamp of a master. Always evocative, they remind us why Snyder is one of our most heralded and beloved contemporary poets.

    From the Howl obscenity trial to the invention of the cut-up technique, Barry Miles's extraordinary narrative chronicles the feast of ideas that was Paris, where the Beats took awestruck audiences with Duchamp and Celine, and where some of their most important work came to fruition--Ginsberg's "Kaddish" and "To Aunt Rose"; Corso's The Happy Birthday of Death; and Burroughs's Naked Lunch. Based on firsthand accounts from diaries, letters, and many original interviews, The Beat Hotel is an intimate look at an era of spirit, dreams, and genius.

    Born into a conservative Italian American family, di Prima grew up in Brooklyn but broke away from her roots to follow through on a lifelong commitment to become a poet, first made when she was in high school. Immersing herself in Manhattan's early 1950s Bohemia, di Prima quickly emerged as a renowned poet, an influential editor, and a single mother at a time when this was unheard of. Vividly chronicling the intense, creative cauldron of those years, she recounts her revolutionary relationships and sexuality, and how her experimentation led her to define herself as a woman. What emerges is a fascinating narrative about the courage and triumph of the imagination, and how one woman discovered her role in the world.

    Saint ... Lunatic ... Genius ... Muse .... Once described by Jack Kerouac as "more like Dostoevsky than anyone I know," Neal Cassady lived what others could only write about. Serving as the model for Kerouac's frenetic hero, the hip, Noble Savage Dean Moriarty in On the Road, and "N.C., the secret hero" of Allen Ginsberg's provocative poem "Howl," Cassady was a genius of life lived on the edge of the abyss. Now, William Plummer strips away the mystery surrounding this enigmatic figure. Plummer brings Cassady to life: his coming of age in a Denver flophouse, his hustling across America, the car thefts that landed him in jail, his meeting with Kerouac and their mad-cap cross-country adventures, his experiments with sex and drugs, his second marriage to Carolyn Cassady, his teaming with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters on an epochal acid trip, and finally his bizarre death. Black-and-white photographs add to this engrossing biography of an outrageous but fascinating life.

    

    The two married, and soon they were hanging out with a group of would-be writers, including Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Lu Anne became the secret link between Kerouac and Cassady, helping to ignite the Beat Generation, and giving Kerouac material for one of the seminal novels of the 20th century, On the Road. Lu Anne Henderson did not live to see the filming of On the Road by Walter Salles, but One and Only tells how Twilight's Kristen Stewart, through her work with both Nicosia and Anne Marie Santos (Lu Anne's daughter), came to find the key to playing Lu Anne in the film.

    Among them was Hettie Cohen, who'd been born into a middle-class Jewish family in Queens and who'd chosen to cross racial barriers to marry the controversial black poet LeRoi Jones. Theirs was a bohemian life in the awakening East Village of underground publishing and jazz lofts, through which drifted such icons of the generation as Allen Ginsberg, Thelonious Monk, Jack Kerouac, Frank O'Hara, Billie Holiday, James Baldwin, and Franz Kline.

    Rumi is one of the greatest poetical geniuses and spiritual masters in human history. His name stands for Love and ecstatic flight into the infinite. Today, Rumi is one of the most widely read poets in the west and has been described to be on par with Beethoven, Shakespeare and Mozart. During a 25 year period, Rumi composed over 70,000 verses of poetry focusing on diverse and varied topics. Rumi’s influence goes beyond nationalities and ethnicities with his work having been translated in numerous languages around the world. His work is mystical and intensely philosophical, with poems of fiery soulful expression, to passionate love verses filled with yearning and desire. Rumi describes the life of mystics as a “gathering of lovers, where there is no high or low, smart or ignorant, no proper schooling required.” He believed in a life journey following a love-based principle free of guilt, fear and shame. The bringing together of a wealthy nobleman and a poor wanderer serve as a reminder to us all that inspiration can come from anywhere and anyone can aid us in advancing our growth.

    These quotes are a source of inspiration and motivation.Read these quotes to meditate and think about all the wisdom they contain.

    Matt McRaid, whose ancestors left the island more than a century before, joins a team of ruthless treasure hunters in search of untold wealth. One of their number is killed within hours and others soon follow. At first their deaths are put down to freak accidents but after only a couple of days in this mysterious place it becomes apparent to Matt that the true cause is far more strange ... and much more dangerous both to them and the whole of humanity.