Back in 2003, I went to Louisville, Kentucky to read in Ron Whitehead‘s Insomniacathon, at the Rudyard Kipling. (I had met Ron through Tom House a year earlier.) While I was there, I got to meet and talk with David Amram, one of the musical figures of the Beat Generation. Amram worked with Jack Kerouac in the 1950s, putting musical accompaniment to the poet’s words.