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can‘t stop the beat

Take a journey into the heart and passion of one of the most

can‘t stop the beat ruth weiss

THE LIFE AND WORDS
O F A B E AT P O E T
brilliant voices of the American counterculture movement.
ruth weiss innovated poetry with jazz in the San Francisco North
Beach scene of the 1950s with contemporaries Jack Kerouac,
Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Bob Kaufman, and
others. For the first time in print, one of the last of the original
Beat poets presents two masterpiece long form poems:
I ALWAYS THOUGHT YOU BLACK (a tribute to her African-
American artist friends) and COMPASS (about a road trip
through Mexico).

"Jazz-poet-performer ruth weiss lived the lore of many of her associates in

the Beat literary-arts movement. She’s a tenacious survivor and anomaly,
being female, foreign born: Berlin (whose family escaped the Nazis by
coming to the U.S. of A.), and fiercely independent. This fragmented Memoir-
cum-Poetry gives a pungent and moving sense of her life and times."
— Anne Waldman, The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics,
Naropa University

"This is a beautiful book, created with reverence for a woman who has
lived as an artist for over 60 years, and whose many talents broke
down the barriers between word, film, song, painting, and theater."
— Randy Roark, author of Dissolve: Screenplays to the Films of Stan
Brakhage and apprentice to Allen Ginsberg 1979-1997

DIVINE ARTS | DIVINEARTSMEDIA.COM DIVINE

ARTS
ruth weiss
“‘You’re what jazz and poetry are all about!’ I shouted at ruth weiss, rushing the stage
after thrilling to her performance at Stockholm’s 1998 Spoken Word Festival. My first
encounter with ‘the Goddess of the Beats’ continues today as she establishes herself
as one of the few female giants who led the birth of Beatitude. Names appear—from
Ginsberg to Kerouac to Lamantia—but in ruth’s ritualistic and evocative Can’t Stop
the Beat, it’s the music tradition of acknowledging ‘personnel’—as she summons the
sidemen with whom this feisty innovator crossed swords and arms. Sayin’ it plain: ever
the rebel, ruth weiss embodies the sound. Live bebop become bebop. ruth weiss is
speaking louder than ever! Listen with your heart!”
— Wanda Coleman, the L.A. Blueswoman, Recipient, the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry
Prize, Nominee, Poet Laureate, State of California, 2005

“This book is an outstanding read for those who want to illuminate as they create. It’s
a journey of an outstanding Beat poet, ruth weiss, who gave birth to her extraordinary
talent after surviving extraordinary circumstances . . . It’s a journey of how her artistic
spirit grew mixing her free form of improvisational words with the beat of blues and
bebop as though she was born directly into the inner world of jazz.”
— Lloyd Clayton, President of the Board of the Mayme Clayton Library and Museum

“Jazz-poet-performer ruth weiss lived the lore of many of her associates in the Beat
literary-arts movement. She’s a tenacious survivor and anomaly, being female, foreign
born: Berlin (whose family escaped the Nazis by coming to the U.S. of A.), and fiercely
independent. This fragmented Memoir-cum-Poetry gives a pungent and moving sense of
her life and times.”
— Anne Waldman, The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Naropa University

“This is a beautiful book, created with reverence for a woman who has lived as an artist
for over 60 years, and whose many talents broke down the barriers between word, film,
song, painting, and theater.”
— Randy Roark, author of Dissolve: Screenplays to the Films of Stan Brakhage and
apprentice to Allen Ginsberg 1979-1997
“The publication of this book is enormously important. It resurrects important details
of the life of one of the seminal figures of the beat movement, ruth weiss. Divine Arts
presents selections from weiss’ entire oeuvre never before published, including a newly
discovered text of the late 1950s. Part travel journal and part surreal dreamscape, no
text of the beat era captures Mexico with more authenticity and immediacy than weiss’s
80-page COMPASS. The pages of this book turn themselves. Simply stated, you won’t be
able to put it down.”
— Matt Gonzalez, former president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors

“I first heard many of the stories in Can’t Stop The Beat sitting with ruth late nights after a
gig in Tommy’s Joynt on the corner of Geary and Van Ness in San Francisco. With beer and
food on the table, ruth would pull out her journal and read. I was astounded not only by the
words and the jazz inherent in them but also by the history of a generation. ruth weiss was
far ahead of most by infusing film and music and poetry in her performances. Her time has
finally arrived, especially with the genius that shines through in Can’t Stop The Beat.”
— Earl LeClaire, Poet, Sugar Grove, North Carolina

“Can’t Stop the Beat offers indelible evidence that the beat, indeed, goes on. And who
better to demonstrate this dancing continuity than ruth weiss, a pioneer in joining poetry
and jazz in a radical vernacular that helped melt the frozen heart of American Cold
War culture and blew open new portals for exploration. ruth’s work remains as lucid,
instructive, and lush with sensuous delight as it was in 1950. All praise to Divine Arts for
refreshing our acquaintance with this neglected American original.”
— Jim Dodge, author of Fup, Not Fade Away, Stone Junction, Rain on the River
can’t stop the beat
THE LIFE AND WORDS
O F A B E AT P O E T

ruth weiss

with an Introduction by Horst Spandler

Published by DIVINE ARTS
DivineArtsMedia.com

An imprint of Michael Wiese Productions

12400 Ventura Blvd. #1111
Studio City, CA 91604
(818) 379-8799, (818) 986-3408 (FAX)

Cover design by Johnny Ink. www.johnnyink.com

Copyediting by Marsha D. Phillips
Book Layout by William Morosi
Printed by McNaughton & Gunn, Inc., Saline, Michigan

BLOWS LIKE A HORN: BEAT WRITING, JAZZ, STYLE, AND MARKETS IN THE TRANSFORMATION OF U.S. CULTURE
by Preston Whaley Jr., pp. 65, 70, 80, 81, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Copyright © 2004 by the
President and Fellows of Harvard College. Quotes used by permission from the copyright holder.

excerpts from I ALWAYS THOUGHT YOU BLACK previously published in — MATRIX #2, POETRY at the 33,
BEATITUDE #35, CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS AUTOBIOGRAPHIES VOL. 24, BOMBAY-GIN, DISCOURSE, AWAA-TE #4,
SAN FRANCISCO READER, OUTLAW MAGAZINE, LE JOURNAL DE POETES, the books SINGLE OUT & FULL CIRCLE

excerpts from COMPASS previously published in — BEATITUDE #4, SEMINA 5, the book SINGLE OUT

TEN TEN previously published in — THE CAFE REVIEW #13, IRA NOWINSKI’S SAN FRANCISCO POETS, POLITICS
and DIVAS

POST-CARD 1995 previously published in — POETRY at the 33, WOMEN of the BEAT GENERATION, POETRY NOW

Manufactured in the United States of America

Copyright © 2011 ruth weiss, cover photograph © Ingeborg Gerdes/Dennis Hearne
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in
writing from the author, except for the ­inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

First Edition, 5 copies signed and numbered by the author.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

weiss, ruth, 1928-

Can’t stop the beat : the life and words of a Beat poet / ruth weiss ; with an introduction by Horst Spandler.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-61125-001-5
I. Spandler, Horst. II. Title.
PS3573.E4164A6 2011
811’.54--dc22
2011002827

Printed on Recycled Stock

 CONTENTS

quotes from BLOWS LIKE A HORN by Preston Whaley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii

Introduction by Horst Spandler:

ruth weiss and the American Beat Movement of the ’50s and ’60s . . . . . ix

TEN TEN (1990). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

I ALWAYS THOUGHT YOU BLACK (1993). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

PHOTOS OF THE POET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

POST-CARD 1995 (1995). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

COMPASS (1958). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

About ruth weiss. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
 QUOTES FROM
Blows Like a Horn: Beat Writing,
Jazz, Style, and Markets in the
Transformation of U.S. Culture

“More than most of the Beat writers, weiss’s art marks the collision of
white biography on the fringe with African American culture.

weiss uses the poem to enter language from every portal. Every
syntactical unit is a window into alternative arrangements of poetic
line. She looses syntactical units from their functionary straightjackets.

weiss has no yen for a golden mean between the subjective and
objective … she cracks the opaque glass of sense and arranges the
pieces … for a body seeking a look, a tone, a rhythm, and a feeling.

weiss’s art throws a party for the senses. It invites the multimedia of
jazz and other sounds — composed, improvised, found, and aleatory
— painting, and film. It works the crowd and dances with all of the
guests. weiss’s forty-minute experimental film The Brink (1961),
particularly, demonstrates those aims.

Bob Kaufman and ruth weiss … also wrote from the boundary, the very
brink of selfhood. They displaced and deconstructed the self in order
to cross the boundary. The next generation would cross back with a
counterculture of new spirituality, environmental consciousness, civil rights,
black power, and feminism. The markets did not follow Kaufman and weiss.
They were shy of promoting minorities and art that did not master and
signify. Nevertheless, Kaufman and weiss drew upon vernacular style and
jazz and quite radically opened up performance spaces for new identities
and community. They helped transform U.S. culture.”

Preston Whaley Jr. 2004

 ruth weiss
AND THE AMERICAN BEAT
MOVEMENT OF THE ’50s AND ’60s

ruth weiss was there. She was there before the literary fireworks
exploded, sparked off by the writers of the Beat Generation in San
Francisco.

One of her maxims is that one should try to be in the right place at
the right time. Her advice to some junior high school students from
a suburb of Linz, who interviewed her during her visit to Austria (in
connection with the holocaust documentary project, A Letter to the
Stars), was: “timing is what matters,” and she added: “approach
foreigners and events and so on with an open mind and see what
they can offer to you.”

In 1952, ruth weiss acted very much in accordance with her

philosophy. At age 24, she went to San Francisco because the
reputation of the city as a cultural and ethnic melting pot appealed
to her. She sensed the right moment for a change of place and made
her decision.

Perhaps ruth acquired this special ability during events that left their
mark on her childhood. Most likely she wouldn’t have survived if her
parents hadn’t had a fine feel for the necessities and possibilities of
the political and historical situation: They left Berlin, her birthplace,
without hesitating too long, just in time to escape the imminent
threat of Nazi terror. When it started to get dangerous in Vienna, the
family made the right decision once more and just made it to the
last train to freedom that saved their lives.

I N T R O D U C T I O N    i x
After a period characterized by moving from one place to the other
(after residing in New York, Iowa, Chicago, Switzerland and New
Orleans for relatively short spans of time), ruth weiss’ search for
new roots finally took her to San Francisco. The city appealed to
her because it reminded her of Vienna in many ways. Settling in
California, which was to become her new home country, meant a
first step towards more continuity in her life and better chances to
develop her creative skills.

To understand the role of the artists in the U.S. during the ’50s, it is
necessary to look at the state of its society. It was the time of the
Cold War, of political tensions, and nuclear threat in connection to
the realistic danger of a coming world war. In American society this
scenario created an atmosphere of collective phobia, which led to
a nasty communist hunt under the command of Senator McCarthy,
during which the term “communist” was applied to freethinkers,
intellectuals and artists of all kinds. In this fear-filled climate, and
after all the hardship of the war years, many citizens believed
that an escape to a better world was possible through consuming
whatever the booming industry of the country provided. However,
for critical or sensitive souls, this attitude equalled a descent into an
intellectual wasteland, which they decided to oppose with wit and
creativity. To be effective, they needed retreats and the community
of like-minded people.

In those days the North Beach quarter of San Francisco became

an oasis for many artists. For the bohemians, this part of the city,
on which the Italian inhabitants had originally left their stamp,
was not only interesting in terms of atmosphere due to its many
cafés, bars and restaurants, but also in practical terms because
of the many venues, possibilities for exhibitions, and jobs it had to
offer. It was an extraordinary place for meeting other people and

x     C A N ’ T S T O P T H E B E A T  r u t h w e i s s
for the exchange of thoughts, and therefore a breeding ground for
new ideas and their realization, thereby creating the basis that
transformed the city into the capital of alternative movements
in the late sixties. This quarter became ruth weiss’ home turf. In
poetic sketches, anecdotes and several poems, she outlines the
impressions of her encounter with the city and links them with street
names, buildings, artist hang-outs, individuals and experiences.

Spurred by the urban atmosphere and the extraordinary possibilities

it offered, while driven by the powers of an emotional fermentation
process, which asked for expression with increasing intensity, ruth
weiss’ long-felt calling to become a poet became more concrete.
She had already written poems as a child and destroyed a biography
begun in her teens — put plainly — she had always written. But
now her poetic potential erupted in a more powerful way. One
source of inspiration was her encounters with other artists, as in the
North Beach bars where she worked as a waitress.

Since this quarter was the major meeting point for local and visiting
artists and outsiders, it comes as no surprise that ruth weiss soon
came in contact with persons who were to strike it big under the
handy expression, Beat Generation, only a few years later. The term
had already come up in a conversation between young writers, Jack
Kerouac and John Clellon Holmes, in 1948, and was destined to
name not only a circle of writers, but a whole generation, but it took
some time to spread to the public.

ruth weiss’ and Kerouac’s paths crossed in 1955. By then Kerouac

had published just one book: The Town and the City (1950). Two
more years were to pass until On the Road made him famous. As
ruth weiss stresses, they were not lovers, luckily, she believes,
because their relationship would not have been as relaxed as it was.

I N T R O D U C T I O N     x i
Kerouac’s visits to her place followed a certain routine. He would
show up late at night with a bottle of wine, and they would
talk about everything under the sun: about writing streams of
consciousness; his technique of sketching with words (i.e. catching
moments in a way painters do), which he developed in those years,
and writing haiku together. Expressing herself in this short form
derived from Japanese literature became one of ruth weiss’ long-
lasting passions. The poems received a special note by the water
colors she added to them. Jack Kerouac’s collected haiku appeared
in 2004. Unfortunately, none from this early stage of experimenting
with the form were included for they did not survive. ruth weiss
reports Kerouac’s comments on her poems: “You write better haiku
than I do.”

The nightly visits regularly ended with Kerouac passing out drunk
on the floor, but often sleeping no later than sunrise when Neal
Cassady, Kerouac’s friend, whom he immortalized in his novels On
the Road and Visions of Cody as the prototype of the Beat hero,
often knocked at the door. Off the three would go on wild Beat style
joy rides (pretty much like the ones described in Kerouac’s books),
on the serpentine roads of Portrero Hill — rides which ruth weiss
cannot remember without going goose-pimply. She believes she
owes her life to there hardly being any oncoming traffic on those
blind curves so early in the morning.

ruth weiss also became acquainted with Allen Ginsberg in the

early stages of the Beat era. She was even his predecessor in
her apartment on 1010 Montgomery Street in San Francisco. For
reasons incomprehensible to ruth, their relationship was full of
tensions from the beginning, even downright hostile on Ginsberg’s
part. Two memories from her trove of anecdotes shed light on their
relationship: one deals with a poetry reading, during which Ginsberg

x ii    C A N ’ T S T O P T H E B E A T  r u t h w e i s s
pushed her down a ladder for no reason; the other, with the last
time they met. In 1996, during a stay in New York in connection with
the exhibition, “Beat Culture and the New America,” at the Whitney
Museum, she suddenly felt a look piercing her back. She turned
around and gazed into the icy-cold eyes of Ginsberg. Only after a
long, silent stare did they turn their eyes away from each other.

ruth weiss was also friends with the surrealist poet Philip Lamantia
— she records a rather spectacular story in compass, a journal
of an extended visit to Mexico. In 1959, ruth met with two of
her friends from San Francisco in Mexico City: Lamantia and the
photographer Ann McKeever, and they spontaneously decided to
climb the near-by Pyramid of the Sun to watch the sunrise. They
made it to the top, but her fear of heights paralyzed her to such a
degree she had to be carried all the way down.

Another anecdote, which ruth willingly tells in her incomparable way,

involves her friendship with the street poet, Jack Micheline. In 1967,
she spent some time in Los Angeles (She had met artist Paul Blake,
her life companion (until 2009) and followed him there. Her current
partner is Hal Davis.). On the way to the different bars, where she
used to write, she constantly spied a tall and impressive man, who
didn’t appear threatening, but seemed to stalk her somehow. Years
later, back in San Francisco, when she and Paul launched Surprise
Voyage, a poetry performance series in the Old Spaghetti Factory,
somebody recommended poet Jack Micheline, whom she had not yet
met in person. She agreed and was just as surprised as he was when
they faced each other. He shouted: “Oh, it’s you! You used to follow
me all the time in Los Angeles!” That was the start of a lasting contact
during which Micheline bought several pieces of art from Paul Blake.
Occasionally, he also appeared unexpectedly and urged Paul and ruth
to buy some of his drawings because he was short on money.

I N T R O D U C T I O N     x iii
A long friendly relationship also existed between ruth and the poet
Bob Kaufman, who had already gained some renown in French
bohemian circles as “the black Rimbaud.” A Jew with black skin,
Kaufman was predestined to be a social outcast. He was a typical
street poet and well-known on the streets and squares, and in the
bars of North Beach. In no way did he crave literary fame — he did
not even bother to write down his poems, but recited them by heart.
The fact that some of his writing is published in book form is mostly
thanks to his wife Eileen.

weiss contributed a number of poems to the now legendary literary

magazine, Beatitude, edited by Kaufman, which was distributed in
mimeographed copies and offered a platform to some of the better
known, and also the now long-forgotten, writers of the scene. In his
book, Blows Like a Horn, Preston Whaley dedicated a joint chapter
to ruth weiss and Bob Kaufman: he views them as typical members
of the Beat Generation in San Francisco, but also as writers who not
only wrote from the extreme fringe of society, but have remained
underestimated marginal figures of literature up to the present day.
He recognizes certain affinities in their literary production of that
period, namely, that they both “displaced and deconstructed the self
in order to cross […] the very brink of selfhood” and broke open
syntactical structures.

Such analysis leads to the difficult question of how far the different
writers of the Beat Generation influenced each other. Beat circles
should in no way be imagined similar to, for example, the hermetic
group which so closely gathered around the poet Stefan George
who stood in the spotlight. On the contrary, they were systems open
for fluctuation with encounters that often happened by chance, but
which also led to longer, though not necessarily constant, close
relationships. The zeitgeist of poetry was not so much to be found

x iv    C A N ’ T S T O P T H E B E A T  r u t h w e i s s
in some quiet chamber, but rather in the streets, the cafés, and
at meetings in cheap apartments where people talked, discussed,
smoked and drank for days and nights.

As a counterpart to the conformism that had seized the country, a

basically individualistic position was what the situation required, but,
instead, it manifested in a community and gathered strength from it,
which might seem a contradiction at first glance, but really is not.
Without doubt, there was a common interest in a transformation of
society, although the protest was not so much of a political than a
cultural nature — the main aim was the elimination of social norms,
most obvious in the realms of sexuality and artistic expression. As
far as the latter is concerned, it meant reclaiming art and literature
as a common good and freeing it from the fetters of conventions,
museums and libraries. In his essay, “The Origins of Joy in Poetry,”
published in 1958, and written under the impression of the latest
developments in San Francisco, Kerouac concisely reflected on that
when he spoke of a “poetry returned to its origin, in the bardic child,
truly ORAL […] instead of gray faced Academic quibbling. Poetry &
prose had for long time fallen into the false hands of the false.” In
this respect, he also speaks of the liberation of “the pure masculine
urge to freely sing.” To Kerouac, it didn’t seem worth mentioning
that women might feel the same urge, but it obviously existed,
which can easily be proved by photos showing ruth weiss with a
microphone and megaphone on San Francisco’s Grant Street, where
she reads her poems to an audience that surrounds her.

Another link among the young generation of writers was the new
type of jazz music, onomatopoeically called Bebop, which had
taken over the place of swing music, which had become highly
commercial. Over time this style managed to free jazz music from
its image of being nothing but entertainment, and, in retrospect,

I N T R O D U C T I O N     x v
established it as an art form. This new wild style, characterized by
ecstatic up-tempo solos, conquered bohemia quickly, offering the
listener a highly interesting combination no less appealing to the
senses than to the intellect. The poets started to sing and swing, as
Kerouac put it in his above-mentioned essay.

Quite likely the first one to experiment with the possibilities of

merging the contemporary jazz style with poetry was ruth weiss. She
had already experimented fusing poetry with jazz accompaniment
in 1949 in Chicago while living at the Art Circle. In 1955, when ruth
weiss encountered Johnny Elgin in San Francisco (a keyboard player
she had known in New Orleans in 1950), he invited her to join the
jam sessions at his home. One year later, three of the musicians,
including Sonny Nelson (who now lives in Venice, California and
stays in contact with ruth), opened The Cellar, a beer and wine
jazz joint in North Beach, where ruth innovated poetry with jazz as
a regular Wednesday night feature. Reciting poetry to jazz music
soon became a pretty common activity among poets, at least for a
while, and it was called either “jazz canto” or “poetry & jazz.” Jack
Kerouac, for example, published some records in this genre. Even
readings by Kenneth Rexroth, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the writer
and founder of the legendary City Lights book store and publishing
house, were recorded in The Cellar. It is almost symptomatic in this
context though, that there are extensive liner notes on the record
sleeve by the well-known jazz critic Ralph Gleason, but he does
not credit ruth weiss with a single word as someone who paved
the way, but instead portrays the two men as the big innovators.
ruth could again have hollered, “I’m already there,” but nobody
would have listened. In any case, today ruth truly has the right
to claim “I’m still here,” because she is the one who has sought
and managed to connect jazz and poetry more consequently and

x vi    C A N ’ T S T O P T H E B E A T  r u t h w e i s s
lastingly than any other writer. In 2000, for example, she was invited
to perform at the Berlin Jazz Festival. The trio she brought from
Vienna included bassist Gerhard Graml, sax player Friedrich Legerer,
and percussionist Stefan Brodsky. No matter whom she performed
with, it was always important to her to see to it that music and voice
met on equal terms, which quite often cannot be said of similar
experiments by other poets, because, in their case, the music mostly
serves as an accompaniment or a background.

In the case of the Beat Generation, the sparking off of the literary
movement can be more clearly traced back to a specific date than
with other epochs of literature. That doesn’t mean the phenomenon
had not existed or been named before, but it was the reading that
took place on October 7, 1955, in the Six Gallery in San Francisco,
that turned it into a movement recognized by a larger public. It
resulted in a renaissance of the San Francisco Renaissance, so to
speak. Its older exponent, Kenneth Rexroth, was the mentor who
lead through the evening, and the wild innovators of the younger
generation who read were Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure,
Gregory Corso, Gary Snyder, Philip Lamantia, Philip Whalen and Allen
Ginsberg, who recited his ground-breaking poem, “Howl”. Kerouac
was busy collecting donations for the wine supply.

A woman was not among the performers. That raises the question of
whether the female writers would have attracted more attention in
the Beat movement if some of them had stepped into the spotlight
during that event. This not being the case, women, for a long time,
remained the muses or Minor Characters, as Joyce Johnson so
adequately called them in the title of her autobiographical novel
about her problematic relationship with Jack Kerouac. It was not
that they did not write, but many of them did not make it beyond
little mags, anthologies or small press booklets. Certainly, this had

I N T R O D U C T I O N     x vii
something to do with traditional ideas about the role of women, to
which both sexes still clung in some respect. As for ruth weiss, it is
true that she found a supporter in Madeline Gleason — a member of
the older generation of the San Francisco Renaissance.

Nevertheless, ruth’s publications during the Beat era were rather

scarce: at least, a number of her contributions could be found in
important scene magazines like Beatitude or in Wallace Berman’s
Semina. Her first volume of poetry, Steps, was published by the
small Ellis Press in 1958, three others by Adler Press, namely Gallery
of Women and South Pacific (both in 1959), as well as Blue in Green
(1960), which was heavily influenced by jazz music, especially by
Miles Davis. Other books by ruth did not appear before the second
half of the ’70s, i.e. in post-Beat times, which is likely due to her
being busy transforming her poetry into performance and expanding
it in an extremely progressive way into the realm of multi-media
by combining it with music, slide shows, film, and taking it to the
theatre stage.

In his aforementioned book, Blows Like a Horn, Preston Whaley

indicates the reason for the lack of acceptance of ruth’s early poetry
by publishing houses like Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Press and by
publishers like Hoyem and Haselwood at Auerhahn Press, who also
specialized in Beat literature: ruth weiss’ avant-garde language,
which eliminated conventional structures, and therefore was not
easily accessible for a wider readership; and, the respective policies
of the publishers, who either looked sceptically upon or were strictly
opposed to either the publication of non-political writing or that of
women in general. But ruth herself also sees the reasons for it in
her own biography: as a child she often had to hide, an experience
that left its stamp on her life and was counter-productive to her
literary success.

x viii    C A N ’ T S T O P T H E B E A T  r u t h w e i s s
It seems that it took nothing less than a general change of women’s
roles in society, and a continuous collective effort on the part of
the women writers of the Beat Generation, before they were heard
and accepted by a larger audience. Despite some earlier smaller
steps towards acceptance, Brenda Knight’s anthology, Women of
the Beats, published in 1996, deserves to be considered the real
breakthrough of the female Beats. When this book appeared, many
of the readers interested in the Beat Generation realized what kind
of treasure still remained to be uncovered. Part of the treasure
were poetical texts of women writers that had been neglected,
also, their autobiographical reminiscences of their role inside the
Beat community, which remarkably contributed to a wider view
of, and a deeper insight into, the era, and also lead to a certain
demystification of some of its male protagonists. ruth weiss is not
only present in the book, which features her biography and some
of her poetry, but also in its audio version, where she connects the
sections of the different authors by some of her own introductory,
poetic mini-portraits.

ruth weiss is also prone to being called “the goddess of the Beat
Generation,” a term coined by Herb Caen, the journalist who first
used the expression “beatnik” to describe the followers of Kerouac
& Co. in June 1958, in a column he wrote for the San Francisco
Chronicle. What the “goddess of the Beats” says about herself is:
“they call me a beatnik poet.” If one listens carefully, one can detect
certain underlying reservations behind these words, because ruth
does not say that she is a beatnik poet, but that she was given
that name. In this respect it should be known that originally the
term “beatnik” was not intended to be nice. It had been formed
in analogy to the Russian satellite “Sputnik” and was meant to
be derogative, and was used that way. Second, it must be kept in

I N T R O D U C T I O N     x i x
mind that as soon as the Beat movement reached a certain level
of publicity, it was commercially exploited. In the media the topic
was often presented in a sensational way. In films aimed at a mass
audience the beatniks gained a dubious reputation. When they
were not assigned the role of criminals, they were usually shown
as stereotyped bohemian characters. People who wanted to pep
up their parties could turn to a rent-a-beatnik service. It is obvious
that such commercialization was a complete contradiction to the
original Beat philosophy and,therefore, it is a small wonder that a
good many writers started to feel uncomfortable with the “Beat”
label. Even Kerouac, who was significantly involved in coining and
spreading the expression, distanced himself relatively early from
being categorized under this term — for example, in the preface
to his text collection, Lonesome Traveler (1960), while he was still
being stylized by his admirers and the mass media as the “king of
the Beats.” With a certain justification, it could be claimed that it
is part of the Beat tradition that writers who are attributed with the
term, Beat, distance themselves from being considered members of
the Beat Generation.

ruth weiss’ attitude towards the labeling is ambiguous to a degree.

On one hand she is conscious of the fact that she owes part of the
recognition she gets to her being categorized as a Beat writer and
she is no doubt grateful for that. There is no doubt that she received
essential impulses from her presence in San Francisco, when the
bohemian scene began to flourish, but, she also knows that she
obtained this classification and the recognition that went along with
it only subsequently. Moreover, she knows that it doesn’t do total
justice to her, and that the understanding of her texts might even be
narrowed by the label. Like any other good artist, she did not remain
fixed in one creative period, but has continually developed. Instead

x x     C A N ’ T S T O P T H E B E A T  r u t h w e i s s
of lapsing into a retrospective Beat nostalgia, she has stuck to the
essential premise of the Beat movement, which has constantly made
her search for new ways of expression in her poetry, her films,
and plays.

Drama was not the domain of the Beats. It is true that Kerouac
himself wrote a play titled, Beat Generation, but the so-called “lost
play” was not published before 2006, and so far has only been
staged once by a small Lower East Side company (in the same year).
Jack Gelber’s play, The Connection, owes its fame more to its film
version than to its stage performances. Michael McClure’s scandal-
causing play, The Beard, is situated at the very end of the Beat era,
and can even be classified as belonging to the rock & pop era.

ruth’s play, m & m, is one that might most rightfully be considered

a product of the Beat era. Put on stage as late as 1965, there are
nevertheless clear signs that justify its categorization as “Beat,”
firstly, because the two characters appearing in it are shaped after
real persons from the bohemian community: both are friends of ruth
weiss; and secondly, the play refers to their initial meeting in San
Francisco in 1957, when the Beat movement had already gathered
some momentum.

The “Beat” character is primarily visible in the eccentric existence

of the protagonists who live on the fringe of society due to their
homosexuality, respectively, their transvestism. It can be called
progressive because in those times, even in Beat circles, it was
not yet common to openly confess homosexual inclinations.
What renders the “fantasy piece” intellectually entertaining is its
associative and poetic language battles in the best of Beat tradition.
Astonishing, is its immanent parallelism to Samuel Beckett’s,
Waiting for Godot, which even ruth weiss had not recognized until

I N T R O D U C T I O N     x x i
recently. It makes sense to understand it as an unconsciously
conceived counterpart, even though, or, just because weiss does
not appreciate the author due to his negativism. But, similarities
arise from the basic constellation: that two queer birds in a deserted
place are waiting for something existentially meaningful to arrive
that does not come and, in the case of m & m, for a car to pick them
up and to save them from waiting in an inhospitable desert area.
A further parallel lies in the conversation, which is often repetitive
and revolves around certain topics, while it appears to be pretty
incoherent at times. Another stunning feature of ruth weiss’ play is
that its title, and the two characters, both have the initials M, a letter
which fascinated Beckett because of its thirteenth position in the
alphabet, which influenced the names of the characters in several of
his books, though not in Waiting for Godot.

Strange as well is the reoccurrence of the phenomenon surrounding

the figure of Macumbre in ruth’s drama, The Thirteenth Witch,
written in 1981. weiss has an unrestricted belief in the magic and
meaning of seemingly accidental occurrences in all areas of life.
The fact that Beckett included the same song about a dog that stole
an egg from the cook in his drama, about ten years before ruth
used the same as a childhood memory in m & m, did cause some
exclamations of disbelief on her part. On the other hand, ruth sees
in such coincidences the workings of a higher reason and fate in
all situations of life. Therefore, Mead’s and Markow’s encounter in
m & m does not lead to continuous alienation and emptiness as
happens with the protagonists in Beckett’s play, but results in a
deep connection via their confrontational dialogue.

In comparison, the play, No Dancing Aloud, staged in 1962 for

the first time, already had an additional dimension not so openly
discernible in m & m. It is true that, also in this play, eccentric

x x ii    C A N ’ T S T O P T H E B E A T  r u t h w e i s s
figures from the fringe of society are put on stage and that Heinz is
a character shaped after a hobo acquaintance of ruth weiss, but they
are hardly conceived as individuals, but carry elements that strongly
attest to their symbolic nature. There are good reasons to claim that
ruth weiss has a special position in this context because of her anti-
cyclic behaviour, thus enriching in a very personal way her potential
of poetic expression by turning to the literary streams of the turn
of the previous century. This was supported by her early interest
in C.G. Jung’s psychological ideas, which increasingly became the
center of attention during the ’60s and began to outstrip the former
Beat icons in this field: Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Reich.

While Kerouac still tried to model the persons in his play “Beat
Generation” after real Beat characters in an almost naturalistic way,
ruth weiss was far from any realism from the beginning onward. She
preferred the poetic drama, used elements of fairy tales and myths,
and concentrated more and more on archetypal figures present
in Jung’s theories and the tarot, e.g. the old man, the wise old
woman, the knight, and the animus and anima, and dealt with the
relationship between people, especially the sexes, in that way. No
doubt, ruth managed to discover new and idiosyncratic aspects in
the old myths and fairy tales.

In the preface to her play The Thirteenth Witch, written in 1981,

ruth weiss explicitly refers to the French writer, actor and literary
theorist, Antonin Artaud, but the influence of his idea of the theatre
is discernible in practically all her plays. Crazy outsider and
rebellious artist that he was, Artaud on the one hand may well be
counted among the predecessors of the Beats. On the other hand,
he also has some points of contact with the concepts of symbolist
and poetical drama. For example, Artaud is of the opinion that it
is not the task of the theatre to reproduce reality, but considers it

I N T R O D U C T I O N     x x iii
a reality in itself, which, nevertheless, has a feedback influence
on reality. Integral parts of his concept of a non-representative
theatre are, among other things, his insistence on the character
of facial expression, gestures and postures of the actors, as well
as the extension of their actions into the auditorium. His style
is characterized by breaking down linear logic and conventional
language structures. Artaud’s stress on the role of the breath as a
link between actor and audience is of special interest to ruth weiss
as a performer of jazz poetry. His affinity with C.G. Jung derives
from his idea of a timeless, basic source, which enables people in
disastrous times to gather strength by reconnecting with their inner
self in order to overcome the horrors of the present.

In her dramatic texts, ruth weiss repeatedly connects Artaud’s ideas

with viewpoints of natural mythology and ecology. The Californian
poet, Gary Snyder, is the one most responsible for turning the Beats
on to nature and Zen Buddhism. Jack Kerouac chose him for the
main character of his novel, The Dharma Bums, which caused, as
Snyder called it, “a rucksack revolution” among some youth after
it was published in 1958. ruth weiss found her own way to nature.
ruth, who in, full circle – ein kreis vollendet sich, says of herself:
“I have always known cities […] I walk easy on cement,” writes in
the same book of her attempt in 1963 to live closer to the pulse of
nature in a cabin in Mendocino:

I am here to clear. to be with MOTHER EARTH. to find the next step.

barefoot. swim naked. in a red mud pond. red dragonflies abound.
sun naked on portuguese beach. nestled between logs. back to the
cabin. sand between toes. oh earth i walk you.

Eventually ruth weiss moved back to San Francisco, then on to Los

Angeles, but the wish to live a life close to nature did not leave her.

x x iv    C A N ’ T S T O P T H E B E A T  r u t h w e i s s
With Paul Blake, she finally turned her back to the city for good
and they settled in Inverness, north of San Francisco, only to leave
it again one year later after a terrible flood threatened their lives.
They moved on to a new home in Albion, also situated on the Pacific
coast, in the midst of an impressive landscape of unspoiled nature.
It comes as no surprise that this coincides with the completion
of her play, The Thirteenth Witch, in 1981, in which she unfolds a
magical and mythological picture of a vulnerable, wounded nature,
whose value has to be rediscovered and preserved. It also makes
clear that, to achieve this, nothing short of a change in paradigm is
necessary, a radical change of ideas, which re-establishes nature
and art in their due roles as the original sources of mankind that
provide healing, balance and energy.

ruth weiss’ work is both modern and timeless. Quite a few critics
had considered Beat literature a short-lived fad. Today it has become
obvious that the writers that sprang from this epoch have had a long
lasting impact on literature like few others. It seems that every new
generation discovers the Beats anew for itself. What guarantees
this continued interest is the candor and credibility with which the
Beat writers convey their experiences, the abounding joy of life, the
abyss of suffering, their experiencing and practicing of humanity,
their either quiet or loud protest against inhumane behaviour and
conformism, and last but not least, their language, which is in most
cases immediately accessible because it is derived from the sound
of the spoken word.

Thankfully, young writers today can identify with this approach

to literature and some still write in the spirit of this tradition.
ruth weiss is a living example of the legacy of that era and an
incomparable and unforgettable experience when one has the
chance to attend her live performances. ruth is authentic without

I N T R O D U C T I O N     x x v
being locked up in the Beat era. She knows where her roots are and
that may well be a major reason she has remained open for change
without feeling a need to follow trends.

Horst Spandler, August 2006

x x vi    C A N ’ T S T O P T H E B E A T  r u t h w e i s s
TEN
TEN
TEN TEN
cometh the dragon
skims on ten thousand feet
drumming remember
along the street of applause
pauses —

it was 1952
a dragon-year
at broadway & columbus
my last hitch from chicago
said this is where you belong

found my room on montgomery

1010 montgomery
10 dollars a month
with a light-well
and a shower steaming on the roof
through the fog

across the hall

professor FOON
kept music in a room

tongue click against tooth

a nervous habit
from near-miss of bomb
on his home in hong kong

butterfly harp
i danced he played

2     C A N ’ T S T O P T H E B E A T  r u t h w e i s s
kept us both
from being afraid

we spoke no english
i wrote in it though
and ate with chopsticks

but not pizza

ten fingers for that

one late-night-walk
uphill on kearny from pacific
the man stopped his black & white
and asked what are you doing
out at night?
just then FRANKE LUPO
(another up-all-night-freak)
stepped through the gate
of his kearny palace
told the man
(since i didn’t speak)
she just likes to walk
then invited me in
to share pizza reheated on coal
with a glass of red
to warm the soul

talked of MAMA upstairs

through glass-clink & fog-blink
regaled me with tales
i’ll never forget nor remember

T E N T E N     3
my first book STEPS 1959
41 dragon-steps
up the steps of kearny casbah
where for years we smoked
joint to the east
made a point in the west
ONE MORE STEP WEST IS THE SEA

on pacific THE INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENT

where i worked the tables
in THE HOUSE OF BLUE LIGHTS
the girls dark & grace
how i loved that place
the music was so fine

lullabye of broadway
garbage-truck smash-crash at dawn
fuck! — can’t sleep
climb to coit tower
ONE MORE STEP UP SEE SUN RISE

TEN TEN
cometh the dragon
skims on ten thousand feet
drumming remember
along the street of applause
pauses —

CHINA GONG
1990
where’s that monkey KAISIK WONG?

4     C A N ’ T S T O P T H E B E A T  r u t h w e i s s
his floats a saga
the crowd going gaga
while he scampers away
floated away
in his robe of atlantis

CHI CHI
CHI CHI

is that you?

TEN TEN
cometh the dragon
skims on ten thousand feet
drumming remember
along the street of applause
pauses —

the dragon arrives

© ruth weiss 1990

T E N T E N     5
 I
ALWAYS
THOUGHT
YOU
BLACK
 FOREWORD

black people — dancers, painters, poets & musicians who have

appeared throughout my life, marking deep impressions — here are
some of those stories.

8     C A N ’ T S T O P T H E B E A T  r u t h w e i s s
 I

1992. black don’t crack she said & called me girl friend
when i told her i was 64. her elegant hand brushed
my face —

i was back in 1928. in berlin. i had just been born.

the nurse asked MUTTI if PAPA was black. it was the ’20s
& jazz musicians were made most welcome in
europe. what do you mean MUTTI cried. your baby is
quite dark but she has light eyes — maybe green
maybe blue. what do you mean let me see her MUTTI
said. this is my baby she looks just like OSCAR.
and he’s dark she said. and his mother even darker.
she didn’t say any more. like his mother is from
budapest & maybe even gypsy & a jew through & through.

I A L W AY S T H O U G H T Y O U B L A C K     9
 about ruth weiss

ruth weiss is one of the last living significant poets of the Beat
Generation. Born to a Jewish family during the rise of Nazism, she
eventually made her way to the United States where she became
friends with, and a contemporary of, the likes of Jack Kerouac and
many other artists of the 1950s American counter-culture movement
of San Francisco (specifically in North Beach). In the 1960s she
began spelling her name in lowercase letters in a symbolic protest
against “law and order” since in her birthplace of Germany all nouns
are capitalized. She continues to perform live in North Beach and
at many jazz and poetry festivals around the world. In this age of
high-speed information exchange, she still uses her “Loyal Royal”
metal typewriter, and lives deep in the Northern California forests of
Mendocino County, USA.

i’ve been on the run

i’ve been through flood
i’ve been through fire
flashbacks
1928 born in berlin. 1933 escape to vienna. write first poems. 1938
left for new york. start to write in english. since 1998 — 60 years
later — i’m back in europe performing, invited to JAZZ FEST BERLIN
2000. the mayor of vienna awards me a bronze medal in 2006 for
literary achievement.

chicago teens. chicago near north side. bohemia & be bop. 1950
hitched to greenwich village. 1950 on to new orleans old french

A B O U T T H E A U T H O R     1 7 9
quarter. 1952 san francisco north beach. 1956 put poetry with jazz
on the stage at THE CELLAR.

i love movies. have made them, been in them — sometimes fiction,

sometimes fact. then come the plays. three of them performed in
vienna 2006. since 1965 exhibits of watercolor – haiku.

i’ve barely begun. since 1982 from albion on the california coast in
mendocino.

ruth weiss

1 8 0     C A N ’ T S T O P T H E B E A T  r u t h w e i s s
 an imprint of michAel wieSe pRoducTionS

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can‘t stop the beat

Take a journey into the heart and passion of one of the most

can‘t stop the beat ruth weiss

THE LIFE AND WORDS
O F A B E AT P O E T
brilliant voices of the American counterculture movement.
ruth weiss innovated poetry with jazz in the San Francisco North
Beach scene of the 1950s with contemporaries Jack Kerouac,
Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Bob Kaufman, and
others. For the first time in print, one of the last of the original
Beat poets presents two masterpiece long form poems:
I ALWAYS THOUGHT YOU BLACK (a tribute to her African-
American artist friends) and COMPASS (about a road trip
through Mexico).

"Jazz-poet-performer ruth weiss lived the lore of many of her associates in

the Beat literary-arts movement. She’s a tenacious survivor and anomaly,
being female, foreign born: Berlin (whose family escaped the Nazis by
coming to the U.S. of A.), and fiercely independent. This fragmented Memoir-
cum-Poetry gives a pungent and moving sense of her life and times."
— Anne Waldman, The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics,
Naropa University

"This is a beautiful book, created with reverence for a woman who has
lived as an artist for over 60 years, and whose many talents broke
down the barriers between word, film, song, painting, and theater."
— Randy Roark, author of Dissolve: Screenplays to the Films of Stan
Brakhage and apprentice to Allen Ginsberg 1979-1997

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ruth weiss