1. Gimme a Beat! Warm up: Read for 15 minutes!
How does music shape poetry?

2. Beat poets wanted to break with convention
Beat poets wanted to break with convention. They were the youth, and they disagreed with their parents’ generation. Their poetry reflected this and was performed OUT LOUD before an audience, usually of their peers.
Watch the following clip and look for anything that seems unconventional.

4. What did you notice? Tell your neighbor, then tell me.
Instruments--jazz
Poet acting cool
Snapping
Audience is young

5. What do you think the poem in the clip is about
What do you think the poem in the clip is about? How does it show a break from convention?

6. Fourth Floor, Dawn, Up All Night Writing Letters
Pigeons shake their wings on the copper church roof out my window across the street, a bird perched on the cross surveys the city's blue-grey clouds. Larry Rivers 'll come at 10 AM and take my picture. I'm taking your picture, pigeons. I'm writing you down, Dawn. I'm immortalizing your exhaust, Avenue A bus. O Thought, now you'll have to think the same thing forever!
by Allen Ginsberg

7. Your turn!
Make a list of words you use in daily language and others that you like the sound or connotation of.
Cut them out and arrange them to form a poem. Your poem should make some sense, and it should sound in some way musical.
When you finish, read them aloud. Snap instead of clapping to applaud.
Dig it?

8. Reflection
How did Jazz music shape Beatnik poetry?