Joshua Beckman

Joshua Beckman
Born in New Haven CT, year unknown-Current
Active 1998-Current
American Poet

Biography
Not much is available on Joshua Beckman, probably because he is still alive and young and one only becomes noticed posthumously or certainly once one attains grey hair. Beckman was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and he attended Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he was the editor of a literary magazine called “Object Lesson”.
He currently lives on Staten Island and is an editor at “Wave Books” where he also translates literary works. He has won a NYFA fellowship, Pushcart Prize, first annual Honickman / APR book award
Beckmans work is said to “mourn the depravity of American urban life while celebrating (sometimes with a bit of irony) the fleeting transcendence of love, sex and fun” and he is known for his sardonic wit and sad humor. He writes using few words, sometimes with snippets of meta-poetry, and creates landscapes, scenes, and brief moments. His poems are distinct in their brevity and dryness, and they convert everything to almost an existential plane.

Works Consulted:
http://www.biographybase.com/biography/Beckman_Joshua.html
http://www.wavepoetry.com/authors/31
http://www.amazon.com/Shake-Joshua-Beckman/dp/193351700X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223995342&sr=8-1

Works
“Things Are Happening” (1998)
“Something I Expected to Be Different” (2001)
“Nice Hat. Thanks.” (With Matthew Rohrer, 2002)
“Your Time Has Come” (2004)
“Shake” (2006)
Beckman has also claimed to be the author of 3,000 other books but they are a secret.

Moods
Bitter- “Those people were like ants/waiting for me to say something stupid/they could drag back home with them.”
Bleak- “Too tired to write/and this hot apartment/keeps me awake.”
Cynical/Sarcastic- “It felt so good/to get my sunburn/but now I’ve got it.”
Detatched- “If a tree falls/in the wodds etc./and so too with friends.”
Melancholy- “The flat world of borrowed things”
Nihilistic- ““All will reach an age and die at that age.”
Wry- “wrapped in a blissful dream/the moonlight shines down/brightly—/but I don’t really know that/I just read it in a book.”

Styles
Beat Generation- Beat generation poetry arose in the 50s and 60s. Beat poetry sprang up in New York and San Francisco with poets such as Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William S. Burroughs. Beat poetry had a rejection of typical American values, new takes on sexuality, collaboration between those in the movement, and creativity. Poems were characterized by their open emotion, “gritty” style, and an undirected spiritual need. The poems were often controversial in their non-conformity and brazen porn/erotica passages at times (ie “Naked Lunch”).

Beckman fits into this style because he writes in a non-traditional format, sparse and almost lyrical. He writes about drugs, “Those drugs don’t have anything/to do with our happiness./Now I really sound like a junky” which were prevalent in beat poetry and deviate from American values. He lives in New York, a region where beat poetry started and remained strong (along with San Francisco). In true beat style, Beckman collaborated a book of poems with Matthew Rohrer in a non-traditional way. They would alternate saying a word, punctuation, or part of a word in the writing of “Nice Hat. Thanks.”

Martian Poetry- Martian poetry became a genre in the 1970s and 1980s. It’s the surrealism of poetry. It is characterized by “describing familiar things in unfamiliar ways”. Ordinary scenarios or objects are written about in a detached manner (through the eyes of a Martian, hence the name). It’s a derivative of the experimental poetry of the 1960s, but also ties in older traditional English schools such as meta-poetry and “nonsense” poetry.

Beckmans detached way of writing about the every day makes him fit into this genre. He writes without much emotion, as though he is merely a dry observer. And he writes about the every day, a key element in Martian Poetry. An example of this his book “Your Time Has Come”. He writes about mice in his apartment, “Mice in walls. Better there than in here” and of everyday events “Flying a kite off his roof. I’m worried he’ll fall”.

Similar Artists
Followers: Beckman is still a new writer so anyone who emulates him hasn’t had time to become established yet. Follow up on some current clove-smoking college students in a few years to find followers.

Influenced by:
Charles Bukowksi- Charles Bukowski, like Beckman, writes about the every day. Bukowksis writing “often featured a depraved metropolitan environment, downtrodden members of American society, direct language, violence, and sexual imagery (poets.org)”. Beckman does the same thing. Both write in a dry tone, calloused and offensive at points. Bukowksi has a non-traditional approach to poetry, as does Beckman.

Matthea Harvey- Since the year of Beckmans birth seems to be well hidden, I don’t know if he was influenced by Matthea Harvey or not, but the writing style between the two has it’s similarities. Matthea collects dialogue she hears on the street, like ““I got everybody saying it like they'd been saying it for years”. This seems similar to Beckman because he write stuff from being an observer on the street like: “I was early and watched the people rushing”. Both write about New York City, and things like the view from their window.