Here on the Edge

Description

City Lights in conjunction with LITQUAKE present a panel discussion with

Steve McQuiddy, Vladimir Dupre, and Steve Dickison (of The Poetry Center at SFSU)

celebrating the recently released book

Here on the Edge

by Steve McQuiddy

published by Oregon State University Press

Here on the Edge is the story of how a World War II conscientious objectors camp on the Oregon Coast plowed the ground for the social and cultural revolutions of the 1960s. This evening explores a long-neglected element of World War II history: the role of pacifism and conscientious objection in what is often called "The Good War." It focuses on one camp situated on the rain-soaked Oregon coast, Civilian Public Service (CPS) Camp #56. As home to the Fine Arts Group at Waldport, the camp became a center of activity for artists and writers from across the country who chose to take a condition of penance (compulsive labor for refusing to serve in the military) and put it to constructive ends. After the war, camp members went on to participate in the San Francisco "Poetry Renaissance" of the 1950s, which heavily influenced the Beat Generation of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg—who in turn inspired the likes of Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, leading the way to the 1960s radical upheavals epitomized by San Francisco's "Summer of Love."

Here on the Edge places Camp #56 and the Fine Arts Group in the context of conscientious objection in America, the World War II era, and the influence camp members had on the decades that followed. It serves as an introduction, an exploration, a narrative, a history, and, ultimately, a human story. It brings together, finally under one cover, the record of the fascinating members of Camp #56 and the Fine Arts Group, and how their legacy of art and peace resonated far beyond the borders of an isolated work camp in the far corner of the country.