Beat Explorations by Robert Masterson

BEAT EXPLORATIONS

This brief workshop will focus on the Beat conception of, as William Burroughs described it, the “celestial radio.” From Walt Whitman’s great “yawp” to Jack Kerouac’s stream-of-consciousness to Burroughs’ cut-ups and fold-ins, the Beats sought ways to open themselves up as receivers tuned to the universal flow. We will use automatic writing to take the first steps toward developing Beat-titude.

Speaker 

Robert Masterson is an English professor at CUNY-BMCC in Manhattan. His publication record stretches back to the 1970s. His first real job while still in high school in Los Alamos, New Mexico, was in a print shop and, in some form or another, he has worked in the literary arts as a printer, writer, editor, teacher, and investigative reporter ever since. Masterson’s work as a student, a professor, and a reporter has taken him all over the United States, Japan (to seek out and interview writers and artists who’d survived the atomic bombing in 1945), China (to study Chinese and work as an English Instructor at Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an, Shaanxi, PRC), Ukraine (for a visit to the Chernobyl reactor and a 6-week tour of pediatric hospitals to observe the long term health effects of catastrophic radiation exposure), to India (for literary conferences and presentations), and inside maximum security penal institutions in Colorado, New Mexico, and New York to lead creative writing workshops. His is the author of Trial by Water, Garnish Trouble, Artificial Rats & Electric Cats, and the forthcoming Sharper Than She Ever Imagined.