Marc Olmsted

Marc Olmsted has appeared in City Lights Journal, New Directions in Prose & Poetry, New York Quarterly, The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry and a variety of small presses. He is the author of five collections of poetry, including What Use Am I a Hungry Ghost?, which has an introduction by Allen Ginsberg. Olmsted's 25 year relationship with Ginsberg is chronicled in his Beatdom Books memoir Don't Hesitate: Knowing Allen Ginsberg 1972-1997 - Letters and Recollections, available on Amazon.

Hard to Be a Saint in the City: The Spiritual Vision of the Beats – Review

Marc Olmsted

Hard to Be a Saint in the City: The Spiritual Vision of the Beats by Robert Inchausti $16.95, Shambhala Books The title of this collection comes from a rather obscure Bruce Springsteen song that David Bowie covered and ...

Egg Man

Marc Olmsted

My father was in a Twilight Zone, 1961, 'To Serve Man' ("It's a cook book" but he didn't say it) My dad, long gone, is holding a chart for the big headed alien I don't remember why He's a scientist - he's giving his ...

Poem

Head Without a Body

Marc Olmsted

I can't remember when I first met Vinny but by first memory he was already using heroin, as was Mark F. and now Peter. It was basically an East Coast thing that was kept very on the D/L out in the Wild West, so I never saw ...

TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN – Some Thoughts, No Spoilers

Marc Olmsted

Now that it's likely most of the most-interested have ingested the first 4 episodes of David Lynch's reboot of Twin Peaks on Showtime, I wanted to share some observations. As an elder, nearly 64, I watched the original se...

Portland Sheets

Marc Olmsted

A Glance Like Flashing Lightning

Marc Olmsted

"Homage! Tara, swift, heroic!" - Chapter III, Tara Tantra Facebook cyber-chat filled with bad news and petitions My answer to depression is sleep and caffeine, whichever works first Still. I shake off the blue...

A Simple Blues with a Few Intangibles
by George Wallace – Review

Marc Olmsted

George Wallace is a PostBeat poet. As defined by the ground-breaking Whitney Museum show of 1995, the era of 1950 to 1965 can be considered to be the time brackets of realized Beat art, literature and film. ...

The Poetry & Politics of Allen Ginsberg – Review by Marc Olmsted

Marc Olmsted

THE POETRY & POLITICS OF ALLEN GINSBERG By Eliot Katz Beatdom Books (paperback) $28.00 In the last 25 years of his life, Allen Ginsberg championed a half-dozen young poets with some regularity. One of these poets was...

Waiting for the Quake

Marc Olmsted

I. Oakland waiting for the quake American poverty's blanket dirty unwashed a shroud on the street abandoned by wandering drug thirst, while the sane sweep in front of their tents (a new day John will watch it for her ...

Oakland

Marc Olmsted

Ocean fog thick in the avenue night white Christmas lights in October Shamrock Arms Bar glowing green & red through clear quartz-glass block front the Dead Sailor Girls will play tomorrow salt taste in air wher...

Can You Hear Me God, It’s Me, Godzilla

Marc Olmsted

You may not have seen the new Godzilla, the biggest summer blockbuster yet, but you must have seen the trailers. My review is meant to enhance your experience if you do finally go to your local 3-D IMAX vendor and see what ...

Mother’s Worry by Chris D. – Review

Marc Olmsted

Chris D. (aka Desjardins) first came to my attention as a published poet in the obscure but excellent zine Birthstone and with his own anthology Bongo Chalice, both in 1977, minutes away from starting his Flesh Eaters band ...

Kill Your Darlings – a film review

Marc Olmsted

The conceit that the stabbing death of David Kammerer at the hands of Lucian Carr would birth the Beat Generation was a premise audacious enough to make me interested. What follows in the film Kill Your Darlings is beyond...

Zoning, by Spencer Kansa – review by Marc Olmsted

Marc Olmsted

Zoning, by Spencer Kansa, Beatdom Books, 2011 - $12.00 - paper Spencer Kansa’s debut novella Zoning is terrifying, page-turning fun. If this seems contradictory, consider that he was an acolyte of William Burroughs, so...