ID Q's- MIDTERM

Hey guys! I compiled everyone's answers to the ID and added some of my own answers to make one big list. hope this helps!

1. “Westward the course of empire takes its way…”


-Gray Brechin
-Imperial San Francisco
-manifest destiny compared to an empire
-imperialism, westward expansion
-SF= queen city
-overturning the open minded free loving image
-painting of men on horseback leading families to a golden horizon
- For Brechin, San Francisco is the culmination of that journey, the exercise of power over territory that is the ultimate expression of Manifest Destiny.
Line is originally from the poem "On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning" by Bishop George Berkeley, for whom Berkeley was named. Berkeley is a conceptual extension of SF, and it was named for the man who wrote the motto for expansionism - testifies to how ingrained Manifest Destiny is in SF's history.
Also, the painting that shares this title is by Emanuel Leutze.
This passage and others like it creates an East-West binary that effectively denigrates the orient. The idea that history starts in the east and moves west served to justify San Francisco's control of the Pacific as well as racism.


2. Gray Brechin’s concept of “the contado”
-Gray Brechin
-Imperial San Francisco
The word "contado" is Italian. Brechin compares SF to Rome because of its extensive contado.
GRay Brechin's concept of the "contado": the idea from Imperial SF of SF being a "Queen City of the Pacific" dominating not just over nearby geographic areas, but the entire Pacific Rim according to Brechin through the Spanish-American War in the Philippines with military bases located in various locations around SF (East Bay area); seen explicitly through the vast aqueduct set-up which allows SF to dominate and control natural resources from the Sierra Nevadas (Hetch Hetchy and Mokelumne Aqueducts; see pg. 112, map 3)
“For [the Italians], the civilized world was a duality made of the city and its contado -- that is, the territory that the city could militarily dominate and thus draw upon. The contado provided the city with its food, resources, labor, conscripts, and much of its taxes, while its people (the contadini) received a marketplace and a degree of protection in return” (xxxi).

“The contado contains other cities and villages that owe tribute to the dominant city. Providing the essential resources and labor that power the capital, the contado is the outer ring of the urban whirlpool, but very much of it” (xxxiii).

“For an imperial city such as ancient Rome or modern Washington -- which San Francisco sought to become -- the contado is national, continental, or even planetary” (xxxiv) Rob described contado as: "the idea of SF's vast urban periphery providing material resources as well as huge labor needs and inputs to build up the wealth and splendor of the "imperial city" a la Rome or Constantinople.



3. “A Walden Pond for Winos” / Washington Square in SF
-Richard Brautigan
-Trout Fishing in America
-three beats drinking port in a park across the street from a church
-this park is the picture on the cover of the book
-discussed how their future was either a flea circus or an insane asylum (better at asylum)
-represents the beat way of the world and how the main stream culture looks down upon them (business girls calling them ‘winos’, but really they are doing nothing to offend anyone
By calling Washington Park the "Walden Pond" of SF, he implies that it is an isolated safe haven for artists and dreamers.
ALSO, don't forget Brautigan's commentary regarding the cover of TFinA: Ben Franklin representing the American Dream that any man can make it (and "Was it Kafka...who said, 'I like Americans because they are healthy and optimistic"), while hungry people "gather in the park across the street from the church"; contrasting what we often choose not to see in America with images which we all too often glorify

4. Tony Bennet, “I Left my Heart in SF”
-1954
-sings of how it’s the best city in the world
-lovelier than Paris and has more glory than Rome but it’s not as busy as Manhattan
-no matter where he goes his heart, his home, will always be SF
In 1965, this was made the official theme song of SF in an attempt to preserve this harmless, mythical image of the city. It is undermined by most of the Beats, who recognize the underbelly of SF society and see that it isn't all wonderful. Also, writers like Brechin and Snyder attack the ways the city harms California.
"Mythical" is an appropriate way to describe the picture of San Francisco that Bennett creates in the song. It relates San Francisco to Rome and implies that Bennett's visions of the city conforms to Brechin's imperial city.


5. Moloch
-Allen Ginsberg
-Howl
- a deity whose worship was marked by the propitiatory sacrifice of children by their own parent
- Ginsberg intends that the characters he portrays in Part I be understood to have been sacrificed to this idol
- Part II is a rant about the state of industrial civilization, characterized in the poem as 'Moloch,' and how it’s devouring the angelheaded hipsters
This section of "Howl" comments on the materialism of cities (not necessarily just SF). Professor Wilson suggested that this is an exorcism in a way, leading the Paradise of the "Footnote."

6. “I was certainly surprised to be named Poet Laureate of the far-out city on the left side of the world.”
-Lawrence Ferlinghetti
-Inaugural Address from San Francisco Poems
-not a Beat, hard worker
-far-out is a play on words for the time
-left side is both political and imperial
-Poet Laureate is opposite of Beat, which is San Francisco
This helps undermine the materialistic, imperialist image sometimes associated with SF. The city is embracing less conventional, more socially conscious poets who step outside of the city and look at its faults as well as its virtues.
That Ferlinghetti used "left" and not "west" signifies a movement away from the romanticized expansion west and the imperial connotations that come with it. As if Ferlinghetti believes that SF can transcend its past. This is very imaginative, but, after all, Ferlinghetti discarded Williams dictum "No ideas but in things" (29).



7. “Such was life in the Golden Gate: Gold dusted all that we drank and ate, and I was one of the children told, ‘We all must eat our peck of gold.’”
-Robert Frost
-it’s all about imperialism and the pursuit of wealth and land
-gold dusted all we drank and ate = it influenced even our basic needs
-dust = poverty, gold = wealth
-dust only appeared to be gold when against the sky, none actually was
-written from a child’s perspective

8. North Beach
-Gary Snyder
-“North Beach” A Place in Space
-one of if not the only place in America where all ethnicities gets along
-people walk there and have a sense of community
-Lawrence Ferlinghetti
-“A North Beach Scene” San Francisco Poems
-a place where many cultures can be heard
-center for free thought and the bohemian way
-Ferlinghetti feels like it’s losing this
-his poem has multiple references to white; “white washed sins, gold hair; white shrouds”
-there are chaulkess homes (without filling), voiceless laughter and choiceless gesture

9. “Coming Into the Watershed”
-Gary Snyder
-A Place in Space
-beginning theme seems to be that SF could be anywhere (northern winds, southern point for puffins…)
-nature doesn’t follow our imagined constraints, it has its own
-the only thing that will last in the world of nature is the watershed, and even that changes
"Coming into the Watershed": seems to me to be Snyder's reply to Brechin with regards to SF's domineering contado and influence, while suggesting our human-made boundaries to enhanced by understanding natural "contados" for example the ideas of watershed or bioregion


10. Citizen Kane / William Randolph Hearst
The story of Kane is very similar to that of Hearst. By setting it in FL and changing the name, the filmmakers were able to comment on the situation without fear of consequences.
Brechin mentions the mystery and curiosity that surrounded what he calls "the Hearst enigma" (214). Citizen Kane can be considered Welles' interest and desire to understand the infamous newsman. At the end of the movie we learn that all Kane ever wanted was to be loved.
“…Hearst’s memory is increasingly invested in his favorite palace. When he is remembered at all, it is as a publisher, a connoisseur of fine arts, and the patron of architect Julia Morgan. Only Orson Welles’s masterpiece, Citizen Kane, continues to significantly trouble that reputation with its unflattering depiction of press lord Foster Kane” (239)




11. Hetch Hetchy Reservoir
-Gray Brechin
-Imperial San Francisco
-1906, earthquake and fire destroyed SF
-afterwards, society called for a dam at H.H. to bring them water
-government, due to voting, is leading the public to believe the water will be free to stop the hysteria
-confrontation between progressives and preservationists
-any dissent to the popular dam was social suicide, but no one knew what was really happening
-dammed Yosemite National Park for water and raised land values
-opposite of the Beat culture
Completed in 1934 SF draws 85% of its water from it. This was an enormous and blatantly selfish expansion the SF contado.

12. Alcatraz is not an Island
-In November 1969 a small group of Native American students and urban Indians began the occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco. Eventually joined by thousands of Native Americans, they reclaimed “Indian land” for the first time since the 1880s, forever hanging the way Native Americans viewed themselves, their culture, and their sovereign rights.
-SF is the city willing to see change and doesn’t hesitate when approached with an idea that is contrary to popular belief
The Native Americans only knew how to fight the takeover of their land and culture with an expression of aggressive imperialism, which is how they were wronged in the first place.
The title suggests rethinking the way we look at geophysical space, inherited as it is from capitalistic notions of property, borders, and limits (to our imaginations). See Snyder and also Ferlinghetti's "Great American Waterfront Poem".

imperialist counter-takeover.

13. “The Day They Busted the Grateful Dead”
-Richard Brautigan
-The Pill versus the Spring Mine Disaster
-rain stormed against SF = even nature herself was angry with the city for busting these icons for drugs
-alligator = reference to a song of theirs
- people in society that he will not let have power over him
- bob weir and rob mckernan were arrested on narcotics charges in San Francisco in the 60s. They were living near Haight street in the city- so that's the only thing that really relates to san francisco. Other than that i guess you could talk about san francisco's free spiritedness and how richard brautigan embodies this in his poem?

14. Turtle Island
-Gary Snyder
-A Place in Space
-a futuristic name for the United States
-no longer divided by invisible lines assigned by the government, but instead by natural beings such as rivers and mountains
-I picture it like the shell on a turtles back, the land on which we live, is broken into sections naturally, not forced
This is the name for the entire North American continent, not just the US. It erases all political borders, including international ones.
Turtle Island: "the old-new name" for the North American continent (243); "rediscovery" of Turtle Island coincides with Snyder's idea of "reinhabitation" and really knowing, valuing, and living off of your "place in space"; suggests mutual respect and engagement (a oneness) between humans and nature
-relates back to various Native American cultures' creation stories


15. beatitude / the Beats
The term "Beat" was coined by Jack Kerouac. Many originally thought it meant "beat down," but he expanded it to mean "beatitude," or kindness, loving of all life, sincere, practicing endurance, etc...like St. Francis.
-Beatitude: "the perfect happiness and inner peace enjoyed by the soul in heaven"
-This idea of transcending the real and structural by falling out of the mainstream, living among "the teeth and excrement of this life," is paradoxical (Intro to Howl).
-Ginsberg: "angel headed hipsters... in the machinery of night"
-Beat is to Beatitude as Brechin's imperial SF is to Ferlinghetti's "far-out city." That is to say, this is about re-imagining reality, not material/technological advancing, but using imagination and creativity to move out of this world, to "see" with the eyes of angels.
Where the term "beat" comes from; started by Jack Kerourac and means utmost bliss



16. “…our beautiful but lethal Golden Gate Bridge”
-Ann Garrison
-Reclaiming San Francisco “Suicide in the City”
-Suicide is only one of many dramas acted out on the bridge; the city’s landmark structure has long been a stage for street theatre (protestors against war, research, destruction of nature)
-the gate is bet known suicide site, and SF has been accused of taking a perverse pride in its reputation
-SF has become known as the country’s suicide capital
-support personal choice and officers should not intervene (in suicides)
-multiple suicide barriers have been brought to attention, but denied by popular demand
-repeated decisions against erecting a suicide barrier have been consistent with SF’s longstanding preoccupation with personal freedom
-“What are we known for more than our tolerance and determination to pursue our own paths, except, perhaps, for our beautiful but lethal Golden Gate Bridge?”

17. City Lights Bookstore in North Beach, SF
-started by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
-first to publish Howl by Allen Ginsberg
-basically ground zero for Beat Generation
City Lights Bookstore: Snyder regarding the beats, "It published its poems in its own little magazines, and didn't even bother to submit works to the large established highbrow journals that had held the monopoly on avant-garde writing for so long" (9); City Lights gave the Beats the freedom to stray from mainstream literature tropes and monopolies
1953.


18. “Franciscan” San Francisco
-The San Francisco that Ferlinghetti evokes, a pre-imperial San Francisco named after St. Francis de Assisi.
-represents the beatific, or saintly, vision of SF, as opposed to the industrial, imperial and car-wrecked.



19. The concept and role of “metatourists” in “You Are Here (You Think): A San Francisco Bus Tour”
-Reclaiming San Francisco
-Bernie, Dean, and Juliet
-tourism in SF is a string of sights and attractions (Bridge, Wharf, Park) with empty spaces between them
-their tour filled in those spaces with things that aren’t officially designated as worthy tourist spots
-“If anything could make the old sites new, it is the possibility of reconnecting them to individual experience – personal and social discoveries through real interactions with places as they are now – as we are now. The tourists would become the tour.”

20. legacies of the Beat Generation as portrayed by Nancy J. Peters
-Reclaiming San Francisco
-Nancy J. Peters
-In those days San Francisco was a rapacious (greedy) society that offered boundless opportunities for the savage exploitation of man and nature.
-There are two elements, at least, that are essential to Bohemianism. The first is devotion or addiction to one of the Seven Arts, the other is poverty
-After WWII, the mass media celebrated common sense, social adjustment, conformity, churchgoing, and togetherness. The good life was defined by a house in suburbia, a new car, and synthetic products.
-San Francisco was unique for the open and friendly relations between blacks and wites who had gone underground
-the beat poet was excoriated as juvenile delinquent, drug addict, and sexual outlaw
-Life magazine: ‘bums, hostile little efemales and part-time bohemians are foisted into polite society by a few neurotic and drugged poets…[they are] talkers, loafers, passive little con men, lonely eccentrics, mom-haters, cop-haters, exhibitionists with abused smiles and second mortgages on a bongo drum – writers who cannot write, painters who cannot paint, dancers with unfortunate malfunction of the fetlocks.’
-J. Edgar Hoover warned America the three greatest enemies are Communists, Eggheads, and Beatniks
-Counterculture offers an irresistible narrative opportunity, with a colorful cast of characters and the seductive themes of transgression, exile, and utopia
-eventually covered by press and became a tourist attraction
-brief period of close collaboration of beat writers and artists was over by 1956

21. Bayard Taylor
-Gray Brechin's Imperial SF (p. 49)
This was the poet who argued that the rape of CA was a good thing because it produced great men and a great, rich society. He originally thought CA was a waste of time, but after returning after much progress was made, he changed his mind and advocated for more development. He prophesied that CA would be like Greece and that her future generations would more than restore the damage done by those who conquered her.



22. “angelheaded hipsters”
-Allen Ginsberg
-Howl


23. Timothy W. Drescher’s concept of “street subversion”
Found in Reclaiming SF.
Organized neighborhood murals are a way of speaking out against government, authority, intolerance, etc. People with a common goal organize and creatively express their opinions. It's a constructive way of recording history and voicing injustice.



24. “[ ] creating a spontaneous bop prosody and original classic literature. Several phrase and the title Howl are taken from him.”
-Ginsberg dedicating Howl to his friend Jack Keroauc, calling him the "New Buddha of American prose". -Enlightenment


25. “Subterranean Homesick Blues”

-title of the song could possibly be related to a novel by Kerouac called The Subterraneans, which was about the Beats. But even before Kerouac's novel was a book by Fyodor Dostoevsky called Notes From The Underground which was popular with Beats like Ginsberg
- one could notice the incorporation of music into the beat movement. The cross over into other media (rather than just poetry) reflects how pervasive and important the aforesaid commentary within the song was really becoming around this time. It foreshadowed similar movements that would follow as well.
-