Overview

A collection of work by Marc Olmsted that discusses the links between Buddhism and the Beat Generation, with a focus on poet Allen Ginsberg. This book includes essays, reviews, and poems by Olmsted.

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9781068698040

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Reviews

When I was making a little anthology of poets whose work I liked about maybe 15 years ago or longer for New Directions annual volume [#37], Marc Olmsted was one of the poets whom I thought gifted and coherent...and was one of the few practitioners post-Kerouac that had picked up on the loose and lucid form that Kerouac had developed. Over the years he's continued writing and pursued spiritual studies that ripened him...poetry and Dharma combine to create the image that portrays mind engaged with practice of Dharma. - Allen Ginsberg, Introduction to Marc Olmsted's What Use Am. I a Hungry Ghost? A heartfelt memoir and dedicated short study of the Beat writers engaged with Buddhist study and the ""fellaheen"" worlds of subterranean experience, mysticism and tantra. A useful crossroad in this time when so much of our spiritual yearnings and freedoms are quelled by ignorance and politics. Olmsted's field notes will be a useful guide when we'll need empathy and human compassion to survive the Kali Yuga. And when we'll know we are not alone. Along with sages of old, are some of the Post-Modern's ""best minds"" that have meditated to the other shore. Liberation! - Anne Waldman, author of Mesopotopia, Penguin 2025 Steeped in Beat literature and lore and deeply conversant with the wisdom of Tibetan Vajrayana traditions, poet, filmmaker, and raconteur Marc Olmsted is a perfect guide to the busy intersection where, for the past seventy-five years, Beatdom and Buddhadharma have crossed. -Roger R. Jackson, from the Preface, author of Saraha: Poet of Blissful Awareness, Shambhala 2024

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