Putting It On

Poets write verses and verses, all words, and in this, they remain anonymous. To read the romantic beauty of WB Yeats prose, you can not tell this comes from the hand of a particularly fiery but well dressed Irish alcoholic. To read the celebral vastness of Eliot, how are you to know reading from a man straight-laced, humourless man who was celibate for a good portion of his adult life.

The appearance of the poets (physically) is in part in form of their prose. When we think of writers, or more specifically poets, we think of a certain appearance, a certain standard form that we expect, that we demand, a poet appears to us. This reflects their personal lifestyles (and in effect our own), their own out look on life, and more often than not, as a slice of modern society.

The picture above shows two different poets. Both are dressed differently. Both have different hairstyles. Both are differently groomed. If we were there, at the very instant this photograph was taken, it would be fair to say, they would probably smell a lot differently. They delievered their verse a lot differently. One spoke of change in dusty lecture halls, the other on brightly lit stages, however both represented change, revolution, both remained poets. They represented the 1960s: an America in social upheavel.

The man on the left, a pillar of popular culture, is instantly recognizable. He is the Jokerman, the Court Jester, he was the First Man To Go Electric, Mr. Rolling Stoned himself, Bob Dylan. The other, to the untrained eye, is not as easy to recongize. Yet he takes the form of what we all expect a poet to look like. I mean, jeez, look at him. Long scruffy beard, unkempt hair (balding!), a pair of poorly positioned glasses, a cigarette baking in hand, cheaply dressed. His appearance is one which we identify with that of a poet.

The poet featured is Allen Ginsberg, the most famous Beat poet and writer of 'Howl', perhaps one of most infamous poems of 20th century. It is appearance that defines him however ... that silhouette, the beard, the glasses. Throughout history, the physical appearance of a poet feeds their entire legacy. When we think of Byron, Schelley and Keats, the great Romantics, we picture suave young men, well-dressed, dashing figures, with a musket in hand, a feather in the other, fighting for the good causes of Europe, and their own demons. The Victorian era (Tennyson, Wordsworth, Browning) conjures up rather more staid images of old men with long beards, sitting in houses in the Lake Districts surrounded by dusty volumes of verse.

Rimbaud, Verlaine - the French symbolists, lousy Absinthe-smirking angels, bathing in the grim of their existence, living in rags, or the Lost Generation, Hemingway, Stein, Carlos Williams, wearing in their Parisian cafes, the jaunty neck-ties, the pinstripe suits - Hemingway with his well-clipped beard. Perhaps though it is the Beats that most typically personify our image of an poet-artist. We have covered Ginsberg, his beard and his glasses, but consider Neal Cassady, Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky and great sundown Jack (yes, im writing about him again). These men dressed as vagabonds pretty much, and existed on the very fringes of society to learn, and ply, their trade. I mean, when Jack would stagger into a bar in late 40s San Fran, you’d know it was him ... Christ, you'd smell the cheap wine on his breath, you’d see the railway grease in his hair, his ripped jeans, the coat he was wearing, that he traded with some drifter down San Luis Obispo way - ah now that’s a poet, that’s the taste in ya mouth, that’s a poets levity!...but i have an obvious slant on things.

Of all the Beats, the Zen poet Gary Snyder represents a far cleaner, healthier image of verse. A practicing Zen Buddhist, Snyder maintained a well-groomed veneer very much in tune with his environment. Here is a man that lived on very little material goods (and still does, might I add), but was tidy, confident and generous. Not the stumbling sundown wine-drunk Jack, bearded Ginsberg, suave young Byron, or coffee-sipping Williams, but an actual member of society you can admire for their humility and obvious refusal to be drawn into a fad, or a typical appearance that we deem they must have.

The lyricists can be included in this too. Jim Morrison’s image was almost larger than his body of work, his lyrics or poetry. The famous 'Young Lion' photograph came to personify the late 60s West Coast era, and Morrison himself fashioned his own very animal, very sexual, enduring image - tight-leather pants, long hair, before he left for Paris, went fat and grew a Ginsberg-like beard (a poetic phase?). Think Dylan, think Lou Reed (all clad in black), think Iggy Pop, think Bowie - poets in their own sense - with distinct and lasting images. Think of a New Zealand poet. For most of us, we will either picture Sam Hunt or James K. Baxter. Both atypical in their dress-sense, Baxter followed Ginsberg’s sense of ill community, both had great big beards, and Hunt - well, a slyly fashioned bard in the truest sense.

So when you think about it, a poet’s appearance mirrors that of the very society they are trying to decipher. The particular image may be crafted through vanity, or a genuinely felt need to become one of the downtrodden - but still eternally important to their gift as a whole.

And hey, its fun to grow a beard too.