Arts & Events

Everything I touch
with tenderness, alas,
pricks like a bramble.
Kobayashi Issa (1762-1826)

In my medicine cabinet
the winter fly
has died of old age.
—Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)

A Celebration of Haiku & Its Relationship to The Beats & Zen Buddhism in the San Francisco Bay Area from the 1950’s and A Book Release Party for “Haiku Revisited Volume 2 - A Creative Textbook” by Louis Cuneo (Mother’s Hen Publications)

Friday, April 29
7- 9 pm

The Beat Museum
540 Broadway & Columbus
North Beach, San Francisco
415.399.9626

The Beat Museum of San Francisco is pleased to invite the public to a special free event celebrating Haiku in the San Francisco Bay Area from the 1950s until now. Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and others, through their avid interest in Zen Buddhism, adapted this unique Japanese form to the new free-verse of the American poetic voice. Jack Kerouac would call them “Western Haiku” in his “Scattered Poems” published by City Lights Publications. 

This event, hosted by Lean Frog & The Beat Museum, will inform and entertain you with readings of some of the original Beat haiku poets and the new voices of this special tradition. Haiku poets Louis Cuneo, Bob Booker, Tobey Kaplan, Jeanne Lupton, Clive Matson, Florence Miller, Amos White, Catalina Cariaga and other special guests will read their own haikus and some from the 1950’s Beat Poets. Music will be provided by Lucho on sax and Toku Woo on guitar. Wes “Scoop” Nisker will conduct the invocation and Louis Cuneo will be the MC. Hear some of the original Haiku works by Jack Kerouac and other Beat poets in this special celebration along with the voices of those currently writing Haiku. 

There will be a reception, book release party and book signing for “Haiku Revisited Volume 2.” by Louis Cuneo at the end of the celebration. As the poet, painter, publisher & co-founder of the historic City Lights Bookstore, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, stated in reviewing the original “Haiku Revisited” in 1975, “They are true haiku worth revisiting over and over...” 

Please join us on this special occasion! This is a free event is sponsored by The Beat Museum of San Francisco and The Foundation of Creative Expression, a 501.C.3 nonprofit. www.kerouac.com