By Russell C. Campbell III
"Gazette" contributing writer

One night in 1993, I drove from Erie, Pa., to Jamestown, N.Y., not that far really, but considering it was November, prime season for lake-effect snow, I was taking some risks. My English professor told me earlier that day that Michael McClure was going to read at Jamestown Community College with Doors keyboardist Ray Manzerak. I had no idea who McClure was at the time, but it was the way my professor described him as a San Francisco Beat poet that made me curious.

THE NONCONFORMISTS This photo from 1955 catches a group of the Beats in front of City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco. They are (left - right) Bob Donlon, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, Robert LaVigne and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Jack Kerouac must have been on the road that day. [Photo by Peter Orlovsky with Ginsberg's camera. Reproduced with courtesy of the Allen Ginsberg Trust.]

As a young English major who thought Jim Morrison was a significant American poet, I was attracted to the Beats -- this mythological band of poets, musicians and artists. They were like the Gertrude Stein expatriates, only living in places like New York, San Francisco, cafes and underground bars.

The Beats go on campus A Wilson Library exhibit opens on April 2 -- timed to coincide with a UNC Library and North Carolina Writers' Network conference April 2 and 3 -- that takes a look at the Beat Generation and specifically the work of Allen Ginsberg. "Lines Drawn in the Sand: The Life and Writings of Allen Ginsberg," opens at 5 p.m. on April 2 in Wilson Library's Melba Remig Saltarelli Exhibit Room on the third floor. A talk by Bill Morgan, artist, freelance archivist and bibliographer of Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, will take place at 6 p.m. in the Pleasants Family Assembly Room on the library's second floor. For more information, see www.lib.unc.edu/rbc/beats/index.html. On April 2 and 3, the conference "The Beats in America: Alternative Visions, Then and Now" takes place. The keynote speaker will be Ann Charters, professor of American Literature at the University of Connecticut at Storrs, who is the first biographer of Jack Kerouac and author of many books and articles on the Beats. To find out conference details, refer to www.lib.unc.edu/beatsconf.

They were romantics like William Blake and Walt Whitman. They were influenced by the longing narratives of Thomas Wolfe and the improvisation of jazz. Like the modernist artists of the era, they created literature that was purely American -- rambling, lost, decadent and visionary.

At least, this is what I wanted to believe.

I told my dad of my interest in the Beats, and he said, "Weren't they all taking drugs?" I launched into a rant about how it was an experimental time in American culture and they were looking for ways to produce new visions and how many major American artists have at one time or another experimented with drugs. "Still," Dad said, "it doesn't make it right."

I saw McClure a second time in 1999 at a Philadelphia club, again appearing with Manzerak. Since Jamestown I had been carrying around a copy of McClure's "Rebel Lions," hoping one day to have it signed. Not that I'm an autograph hound, it's the connection -- that degree of separation that makes me one step closer to the magic -- that appealed to me. I wanted some part of that. I wanted to be cool.

As the performance wrapped up, several audience members followed Manzerak and McClure back to the dressing room. At first they were cordial, then the crowd grew and several people became pushy, hugging Manzerak and snapping his picture. He slammed the door in frustration; I was the first person on the other side, book ready, pen in hand. To have a door slammed in your face by a member of the Doors has to count for something, though.

For years, every time I befriended another writer or an artist, I fantasized about being the next movement -- something similar to the Beats, a group of renegade visionaries bringing poetry and art to the masses, reading on street corners, setting up makeshift galleries in back alleys.

Fast-forward several years -- past poetry readings by Amiri Baraka and Robert Creeley; past conversations with Alfred Leslie and Philadelphia poet Tom Devaney, a student of Ginsberg's -- and fast-forward to another state.

I'll get to see McClure again, this time courtesy of the Beat Conference at Carolina on April 2-3 (see box at left for details). This time he'll perform with musician David Amram, who composed the score for Leslie's Beat-film classic "Pull my Daisy," also being shown at the conference.

This time I'm a little less idealistic, more interested in building birdhouses than in hitchhiking across the country. I no longer believe that art can change society, perhaps only make it a little better. Still, I will be there, listening to scholars interpret the work of these artists who dared to howl. And maybe, I will have "Rebel Lions" with me, just in case.