In the process of writing this, I’ve come to realize just how hard it is to write about something that you truly love. I guess love is told in stories, but I don’t know where this story starts, if it starts at all. 

Poetry is one of those things you just have to get. You can’t train yourself to love poetry – or really art in general – if you don’t get it. Along this line, you tend to hear stories of common idiots or goofballs coming to find themselves amidst states of pure transformation in the effect of one well-written poem, one masterfully brushed painting – something that speaks to the heart and nuances of the individual. 

I must have been 13, sitting in a cold red room. There was a big paper poster on the wall with a haiku written on it. I just sat there, staring at it. I was so exhausted all I could feel was the words on my lips, repeating themselves: 

Two traveling salesmen 

passing each other

On a Western road. 

Hypnotized is the only way I can describe it. This was in an art gallery nestled away in a downtown nook. What was I even doing there? All my friends were dragging me along, and I just wanted to sit down, stare at that poster. I felt blissful, like there was an intransigent state of mind that I could anchor my feet in, leave myself in the moment, my mind an island, free of prior notion. 

Jack Kerouac wrote the haiku as part of his collection, “American Haikus.” I didn’t care much for literature or anything artistic up to that point in my life. In fact, I had this entrenched conviction that writers were bowtie wearing dweebs with thick glasses and lispy voices. But Kerouac didn’t look like any dweeb I had ever seen in my life. He looked like a football player (he actually was!), and he was somewhat handsome.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d ever been to a library. Kerouac provided me a chance to go in there and explore an interest of mine that didn’t make me feel nerdy, like all those other rows of names did. 

Five years passed. Now, I have developed a love for literature that has come to define me. I have read some truly amazing works and come to love them as anyone would love something dear to their hearts. 

Kerouac belonged to the Beat Generation, unique to the 1950s and consisting of truly unforgettable Americans such as Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Neal Cassady, Laurence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, Gregory Corso and of course, Kerouac himself. They were, in a sense, even more of a lost generation than the Lost Generation were, characterized by their rootlessness, living their days in complete rejection of American norms, expectations and morals. 

They were poets, writers – some experimental and some so traditional that they could even be described as Antiquity. They never wanted to live life in any other way than they wanted to, sharing their art with each other, developing styles that were unique and enjoyable compared to stale and traditional. They were (in the eyes of the young teenager) even cool. 

With the special place the Beat Generation holds in my heart, I thought for my final rendition of Panou’s Paper Panel I would share my favorite works and share why they mean so much to me. 

For anyone who’s reading this, or anything that I’ve ever published, thank you. It means a lot to me. To the editors and writers and teachers I have worked with in the last four years who have supported me and helped me – you all know who you are – thank you for an amazing time. 

The List

#5: A Coney Island of The Mind – Lawrence Ferlinghetti

A collection of poetry written about despair, sadness and loss is hardly the easiest read for anyone. But neither is the experience of despair, sadness and loss easy for anyone. Ferlinghetti’s strangely traditional yet characteristically Beat style asks if what he sees in front of him is worth the struggle. So it becomes up to you, the reader, to answer that question yourself. Is anything worth the struggle? 

#4: Gasoline – Gregory Corso

I bought “Gasoline” in San Francisco sometime around 2021, and I have to say, nothing’s ever seemed so bizarre yet so solemn as the work of Corso’s. He wrote “Gasoline” while traveling with Allen Ginsberg in Mexico and France, yet it is his symbolic exile from his home that most strongly illuminates his connection to America. 

#3: Mexico City Blues – Jack Kerouac 

“Mexico City Blues” is written in 242 choruses. It is a contemplation on Kerouac’s behalf while living in Mexico City of everything from his father and childhood all the way to indigenous mythology and Eastern mysticism. You just feel like you are Kerouac when reading his work, and I can’t say anything else about it. 

#2: Howl – Allen Ginsberg

“Howl” was one of those works I was afraid to read because of how loved it was. I felt that if I read it and it wasn’t up to par with my expectations, I’d be eternally disappointed. It wasn’t until sitting in my AP Lit classroom that I was exposed to the work (I actually contemplated leaving the classroom), that I ever got to read “Howl.” Words cannot describe how eternally connected to the human condition that Ginsberg’s fresh, Whitmanesque style writing is. “Howl” sums up the entire Beat Generation into one, short classic. 

#1: On The Road, The Original Scroll – Jack Kerouac

The only piece of prose on this list, and compared to the strength of the works here, “On the Road” making the top spot truly speaks levels to its brilliance. I cannot let anyone think I am referring to the corporatized, modified version printed as a traditional novel. No, the only real way to read Kerouac’s “On the Road” is to read the messy, uncouth and purely raw scroll that canonized decades of nomadry and vagabond status in America’s bear pits, underground and underbelly. It is the greatest piece of American literature ever published.