Author
Sebastian Matthews lives with his wife and son in Asheville, North Carolina,
where he teaches at Warren Wilson College and edits Rivendell. Matthews has written a memoir, In My Father's Footsteps
(Norton, 2004). He has also co-edited, along with Stanley Plumly, Search
Party: Collected Poems of William Matthews (Houghton Mifflin, 2004) and The
Poetry Blues: Essays and Interviews of William Matthews (University of
Michigan Press, 2000). His work has appeared in, among other places,
Atlantic Monthly, Blue Mesa Review, North American Review, New England
Review, Poetry Miscellany, Post Road, Seneca Review, Tin House, Virginia Quarterly
Review, & SOLO. Matthews is also on faculty at the Tinker Mountain Writers Workshop.
Matthews edits Rivendell, a literary arts journal with an emphasis on place. Rivendell focuses on the places out of which art is made and enjoyed: a geographic location, a community, a shared sensibility. The journal's third issue, Workshop to Woodshed, celebrates the artist's perpetual back and forth between the "woodshed" of solitary work and the "workshop" of collaborative efforts.
Email Sebastian at sebastian@inmyfathersfootsteps.com
Upcoming Events
Non-Fiction: Amy Charlotte Benson and Sebastian Matthews
January 11, 2005 7-9 PM, FREE!
KGB Bar: 85 East 4th St, NY, NY 10003 : 212-505-3360
AMY BENSON's, The Sparkling-Eyed Boy, was chosen by Ted Conover as the 2003 winner of the Bakeless Prize in Creative Nonfiction from Bread Loaf Writer's Conference. It was published by Houghton Mifflin's Mariner Division in June 2004. In August 2004, she attended Bread Loaf Writer's Conference as a Fellow.
A Celebration of the East Coast Beat Movement in Poetry + Prose
Poets and musicians celebrate the Beats!
Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center
Friday, February 11, 8:00 pm
Past Events
Malaprops Bookstore
Asheville, North Carolina, January, 2004
Reading with Richard Chess and Glenis Redmond
Glenis Redmond
Sebastian Matthews, with Richard Chess and Glenis Redmond
Poets House
New York City, March 18, 2004
"Goodbye Pork Pie Hat:" A Salute to William Matthews.
Hosted by Sebastian Matthews. With Russell Banks, Daniel Halpern,
A. Van Jordan, Galway Kinnell, Sharon Olds, Patrick Phillips, Stanley Plumly,
Gerald Stern & Chase Twichell
Galway Kinnell
Gerald Stern
Russell Banks
Sharon Olds
A. Van Jordan
Athens Institute of Contemporary Art
Athens, Georgia, May 7
“Song for My Father”: A Night of Poetry & Jazz.
Hosted by Sebastian Matthews. With Coleman Barks & Carl Lindberg Trio.
Listen to readings from ATHICA
Stream: Sebastian Matthews reading at ATHICA
Download: Sebastian Matthews reading at ATHICA (Right-Click and choose "Save As")
Stream: Coleman Banks reading at ATHICA
Download: Coleman Banks reading at ATHICA (Right-Click and choose "Save As")
Sebastian Matthews
Coleman Barks
Carl Lindberg
ATHICA BENEFIT
ATHICA City Dope is not a narrow-minded government-only kind of guy. City Dope appreciates all the frisson and juice that make Athens glow. Consequently, Friday the 7th found us at Athens Institute of Contemporary Art (ATHICA) in the pleasingly redone warehouses at the railroad on Tracy St. The occasion was the closing reception for the "Embodied Variations" show and a benefit for ATHICA hosted by poets Coleman Barks and Sebastian Matthews, backed by The Carl Lindberg Trio and catered by Green Scene Bakery and Trumps. Well, it was one of those Athens evenings that you're sorry you missed and glad you went. In other words, magic. Barks and Matthews read their own poetry and that of Sebastian's late father, Bill Matthews. All three poets are easily accessible, and the informal, rocking-chair setting, along with the beer and wine, made it feel like sitting around on your back porch with a couple of storytellers with good eyes for the details and good ears for the rhythms of our lives. Behind them the trio added a slow, soft counterpoint that heightened the words and accentuated the tempo of the telling. Okay, if you missed it, just remember: Coleman Barks has evolved into a sort of national treasure, but he still gives himself frequently to causes around here, and he's still just as funny and unassuming as he was when he charmed undergraduates in the English department. And don't dare miss any performance connected to Carl Lindberg. Those guys are tight and right-on. And Lizzie Zucker Saltz and her board and volunteers at ATHICA deserve your support and reward it with astonishing art. As world traveler and bon vivant Ed Wilde said after Friday's show and performance: "I feel like I've been somewhere."
From The Flagpole, Athens, GA, 5-12-04
A Celebration of the West Coast Beat Movement in Poetry + Prose
Poets and musicians celebrate the Beats!
Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center
On Friday, December 10 a select group of local poets and writers with ties to the Beat generation will read and perform their work and that of their predecessors at the Black Mountain College Museum + Art Center located at 56 Broadway in downtown Asheville. The event will continue a three-month celebration of the Beat movement and the 1950s San Francisco Renaissance inspired by the exhibition of paintings and prints by artist Leo Krikorian that opens on Dec. 3 at BMCM+AC. On December 10 poets and musicians will honor West Coast Beat writers such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, Bob Kaufman, Gary Snyder, Diane DiPrima, Janine Pomy-Vega, Richard Brautigan, Jack Hirschman, David Meltzer, Lenore Kandell, Philip Whalen, Jack Micheline, and Ken Kesey.
Visual artist and Black Mountain College student, Leo Krikorian was known as the "Grandfather of the Beats" because of a now-legendary bar he opened in 1953 in San Francisco called The Place. The Place was a watering hole and cultural mecca for Beat era poets, artists, musicians and filmmakers. In addition to the San Francisco Renaissance writers named above, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Robert Creeley, Jonathan Williams, Robert Duncan, Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg also frequented Krikorian's bar--a place where artists met to talk, drink, socialize and perform their poetry with local jazz musicians.
Honoring the spirit of The Place and the San Francisco 1950s, local poets, writers and aficionados who will be featured performers for the Friday, Dec.10 event include former Beatitude magazine editor and founding Director of the San Francisco Poetry Festival, Thomas Rain Crowe; 1960s neighbor to and cohort of Ken Kesey, Michael Revere; grandbaby Beat poet and performance artist Ted Pope; Sebastian Matthews, editor of Rivendell journal and of Search Party, the collected poems of his late father, William Matthews,; poet, renaissance man and Black Mountain College and Beat scholar, Jeff Davis; poet and publisher/editor of Black Mountain Review, and owner/proprietor of Bookdogger Bookstore in Black Mountain, David Wilson; owner/proprietor of The Reader's Corner bookstore in Asheville, Gillian Coats; Brooklyn College student of Allen Ginsberg who now teaches at UNC-A, Lori Horvitz; Warren Wilson College student, Malaprop's Bookstore employee and editor of Thistle Journal, poet Jaye Bartell. Providing jazz accompaniment and music for the evening will be the JAR-E Jazz Quartet from Asheville. We also anticipate a live guest appearance via satellite by noted Beat writers. This special evening of Beat generation-inspired prose, poetry and music will be recorded live for a future show to be aired on WPVM, 103.5FM.
No beret required
Dec 8, 2004 / vol 11 iss 19
Event celebrates Beat ties to WNC
by Alli Marshall
[A note to the reader: This article is best accompanied by jazz – say, Chet Baker, circa "I'm Through with Love" – and coffee. Strong, black coffee ... we're about to check the Beats.]
I'm talking Kerouac rewriting Buddhism, Cassady stealing cars, and Ginsberg letting out a howl. But of course they were more than their collective scribblings, and perhaps greater for having bared their souls on the page.
And now, 50 years after the fact, Kerouac's rambling, free-form On the Road is studied in colleges. Surely the Beats were surprised to see their work go from antiestablishment to literary canon fodder.
Of course, neither the West Coast Beats (Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder) nor the East Coast Beats (Gregory Corso, William Burroughs) could have imagined their prominent place in history. They were simply too busy making art, writing poetry and holding avant-garde "happenings."
But here's the thing (and I'm going out on a bit of a limb here): The Beats might not have happened at all, if it hadn't been for a little help from Western North Carolina.
Family ties
Black Mountain College "had close affinities" with the Beat movement, explains BMC and Beat scholar Jeff Davis. "The professors especially had strong connections. Robert Creeley, who edited the Black Mountain Review, was one of the first to publish the Beats." Creely, Davis adds, "gave them some credibility."
While stuffier universities eschewed the Beats' free verse and unformatted, unhindered style, Black Mountain College – known for encouraging creativity – embraced their work. In fact, professors like Creeley and BMC rector Charles Olsen shared a literary ancestry with the Beat writers.
"They were decedents of [Ezra] Pound and William Carlos Williams," Davis notes. "Part of the free verse, nonacademic lines going back to [Emily] Dickinson and [Walt] Whitman."
But it wasn't just a matter of publishing a few poems. Former BMC student Leo Krikorian, whose work is currently on display at the Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center (BMCM+AC) in Leo Krikorian/Implied Space, the exhibit that served at the impetus for the upcoming Beat Celebration, landed in WNC in 1947. He studied painting for a year before heading west to San Francisco. In 1953, he and fellow BMC student Knute Stiles opened a bar simply christened "The Place."
The watering hole lasted less than a decade, but it attracted poets, artists, filmmakers and musicians. It served as the backdrop for Kerouac's The Subterraneans, and offered a jumping off point for the greater movement. In fact, Krikorian – though younger than many of his contemporaries – is known as the Grandfather of the Beats.
And the Beat goes on
So, if there's a Grandfather, that means there have to be kids and grandkids, right?
"[Richard] Brautigan is responsible for the 'Baby Beats' nomer," explains local poet Thomas Rain Crowe, who was part of the San Francisco Renaissance and the second wave of the Beat movement that transpired in the 1970s. "He was drunk in a bar one night and was tired of the noise us young people were making, and said, 'You're just a bunch of baby Beats.'"
But, according to Crowe, the older poets and artists embraced the younger generation for the most part.
Like many of his peers, Crowe had been part of the '60s hippie scene, until it "all came crashing down." Then, he says, "Eventually we all sort of migrated to San Francisco and all ended up in the same place. The Beats were in a sort of decline and they were glad to see us coming."
The poet remembers Gregory Corso crashing on his couch. Crowe worked on resurrecting Beatitude, a Beat magazine started by Bob Kaufman and others in 1959.
For Crowe, rubbing elbows with and being tutored by his heroes was a remarkable experience because, as he points out, "It's really the only literary movement that's happened in this country, other then the academic writers ... which is just more of the same. The Beats really upset the apple cart."
Stuffed shirts need not apply
When the BMCM+AC decided to turn the Krikorian exhibit into more than just a quiet art viewing, Crowe and other local writers with roots in the Beat movement jumped on board.
"Originally they were going to invite a bunch of academics to come and read the Beats and I thought, 'Oh, how dreadfully dull,'" he recalls.
Luckily, that plan morphed into having contemporary artists read works informed by the Beat movement, and much of it will be accompanied by jazz from the Jar-E Jazz Quartet. But don't bother with the beret or turtleneck; this is a come-as-you-are event.
"We try to work in the spirit of the college, which was in the outsider movement," Davis says. Instead of striving for an academic ideal, BMC was, according to the historian, "all about helping people discover themselves."
So, the likes of poets Ted Pope and newcomer Jaye Bartell will perform, while others such as Michael Revere (Ken Kesey's neighbor in the '60s) and Lori Horvitz (UNCA professor and student of Allen Ginsberg) will put in appearances.
So, are these artists then the "grandbaby Beats"? "Yeah, in a way," Crowe allows. "There are a number of people here in WNC who get their juice from the Beat movement."
And under the colorful, geometric paintings of Grandaddy Krikorian, some of those people will return the favor.
A Beat Celebration, focusing on the West Coast Beats, takes place at the Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center on Friday, Dec. 10 at 8 p.m. Cover is $3 for students and BMCM+AC members, $5 for the general public.
The Beat lives on: Local poets to celebrate predecessors' legacy
By Paul ClarkPaul Clark
Dec. 9, 2004 4:52 p.m.
ASHEVILLE - Every Thursday night during her first semester in grad school at Brooklyn College, Lori Horvitz met with her poetry instructor, Allen Ginsberg. Afterward, they'd share a cab to their respective homes in Manhattan's East Village.
"He just said what was on his mind, which I was kind of afraid of, but also envious of," said Horvitz, now an assistant professor of language and literature at UNC Asheville. "Just didn't care what people thought.
"He was at a point in his life where he (could tell me), `You know, this is the first time in life where I can support myself writing poetry, and ..." well, Horvitz remembers, he said there were problems with his hydraulics.
Boldness is a hallmark of Ginsberg's, as well as that of other Beat writers, whose vigorous prose goaded the conservative 1950s society that spawned it. The United States' current swing rightward makes Beat poetry and prose all the more relevant to Horvitz and other performers in tonight's Beat writings performance at Black Mountain College Museum + Art Center.
"You know, Ginsberg was censored for (his poem) `Howl,' and he took it to court and won," Horvitz said. "We're living in conservative times again. The Beats are sort of primalists - they sort of speak for every generation that challenges the status quo."
Who were the Beats?
The Beat generation was largely a literary movement involving writers and performers in New York City and San Francisco. Like other disenfranchised groups (hippies, punks, goths), Beats opposed the established order and found a more "real" existence outside the margins of accepted society.
"You can argue that the Beats were maybe the only viable literary movement that this country has had," said Thomas Rain Crowe, one of tonight's performers and an Asheville- area resident who co-founded and directed the San Francisco International Poetry Festival. "They were a response to the conservative values of post-war '50s - equal rights, civil rights, free speech. Suddenly, with the Patriot Act, these issues are coming back again to haunt us."
Beat mentality continues
It's not hard to find the Beat ethos in Asheville. Vincent's Ear, a coffeehouse that next week closes its doors after 12 years of providing performance space to poets and experimental music, is very Beat.
The Relaxed Reader in West Asheville and The Reader's Corner in Montford have a Beat feel. The underground parties at the Wedge building, where dress is as political as bumper stickers, they're Beat.
And, of course, Black Mountain College was Beat even before the Beats.
A world-renowned, avant-garde institution that operated from 1933 to 1956, it attracted writers and artists from all over the world, all turned on by the hugely creative energy there.
The Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center preserves and continues its legacy.
Celebrating that legacy
Tonight's event continues a three-month celebration at the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center of the Beat movement and the 1950s San Francisco Renaissance. On display there through April is an exhibition of paintings and prints by artist Leo Krikorian.
Visual artist and Black Mountain College student, Krikorian was known as the "Grandfather of the Beats" because of a now-legendary bar he opened in 1953 in San Francisco.
"The Place" was a watering hole and cultural mecca for Beat-era poets, artists, musicians and filmmakers, among them Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Robert Creeley, Jonathan Williams, Robert Duncan, Gregory Corso. And Ginsberg.
Among tonight's performers are:
· Thomas Rain Crowe, former editor of the Beat magazine "Beatitude," a friend of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Diane DiPrima's
· Michael Revere, who lived beside and hung out with Ken Kesey in the 1960s
· Sebastian Matthews, editor of "Rivendell" journal and of "Searching for Survivors," the collected poems of his late father, William Matthews
· Jeff Davis, poet and Black Mountain College and Beat scholar who learned woodcarving from the Kwakwaka'wakw people in British Columbia
· David Wilson, publisher/ editor of "Black Mountain Review" and owner proprietor of Bookdogger Bookstore in Black Mountain.
The Beat goes on
Jaye Bartell is a Warren Wilson College student and Malaprop's bookstore employee who edits a small writing arts journal in Asheville, "Thistle," considers himself "aligned with the philosophies of the main writers of that time, Kerouac and Ginsberg's `all is beatific' view of humanity, and their insistence that dirt is as holy as gold-dust.
"Their work was unique and explosive," Bartell said, "and for their re-infusion of joy and ecstasy, I am grateful."
"There's obviously a message there that speaks to the younger generation," Crowe said. "I'm always running into people at colleges and cafes who are very well versed in Beat literature."
The Beat-inspired prose, poetry and music tonight will be recorded live for a future show on WPVM/ 103.5-FM.
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