undergraduate years in the late 1940s. After graduating, they immigrated to New York, where their common haunts included art museums and galleries, the ballet, and summer cocktail parties on eastern Long Island. The portraits in this exhibition have been selected to reflect the wide range of these writers--they include paintings, photographs, woodcuts, drawings, prints, a caricature, and a sculpture. Some of the artists knew these poets as intimate friends; Allen Ginsberg, Robert Frank, and Jonathan Williams, for example, photographed their close associates to create a behind-the-scenes portrait of the Beat Generation and the Black Mountain poets. Other photographers, notably Fred W. McDarrah, Harry Redl, and John Cohen, captured the art and poetry world in which they lived for publication in magazines. Stylized portraits by Alex Katz, Alice Neel, and Larry Rivers reflect the close links between the poets and the New York art world, while Peter LeBlanc's woodcuts, inspired by sumi ink drawings, evoke the San Francisco poets' ties to Asia. Prints by American-born British citizen R. B. Kitaj and by the English caricaturist Ralph Steadman suggest the international importance accorded these writers. This cornucopia of images of poets is anchored by their words. The written word is represented by the poets' publications from the period. Ranging from informal, mimeographed little magazines to elegant books that resulted from collaborations with artists, these publications were essential for disseminating the poetry that eluded the mainstream publishing industry. The spoken word is represented by audiotapes of several poets reading from their own works. These tapes--some recorded in pristine studio conditions, others recorded live against the makeshift backdrop of group readings- -reflect the vocal contributions in a group that valued the tradition of the troubadour. As these poets eloquently demonstrate, now, when television and movie images ...
