Famed Beat Poet Saw Sea Serpent
Posted by: Loren Coleman on August 7th, 2009
Shown clockwise from left: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Lafcadio Orlovsky, and Gregory Corso in 1956. The Beat movement was characterized by a rejection of the materialism, consumerism, and conformity of the 1950s, in favor of individual freedom and spontaneity. Photofest.
Beat poetry evolved during the 1940s in both New York City and San Francisco. The Beat Generation is a term identified with a group of American writers (led by Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Howard Hart, Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Gregory Corso) who, finally on the West Coast, in San Francisco, created the core of the movement in the early 1950s.
Allen Ginsberg’s first book, Howl and Other Poems (1956), published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s press City Lights, is often considered representative of the Beat poets. Two other major works of Beat writing are Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957) and William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch (1959).
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 1965.
Besides publishing the Pocket Poets Series, Ferlinghetti had founded the legendary San Francisco bookstore City Lights, which is still in operation today. City Lights is recognized as an important landmark of Beat generation history, and assisted San Francisco becoming the focal point of the Beat movement.
Michael McClure, Bob Dylan, and, you guess, Lawrence Ferlinghetti or Allen Ginsberg? Larry Keenan Photo.
In the 2003 book, The Beat Generation in San Francisco, author Bill Morgan wrote of the Caffé Trieste at the corner of Vallejo and Grant Street: “This was and still is a major writers’ hangout in North Beach. Poets like Gregory Corso, Kaye McDonough, Kirby Doyle, Tisa Walden, Howard Hart, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Hirschman, and Jack Kerouac often hung out, yakking late into the night and sometimes writing. Ferlinghetti wrote…Unfair Arguments With Existence, at a back table in the 1960s. And Francis Ford Coppola brought a portable tape recorder to work on the script of The Godfather.”
Neeli Cherkovski, the author of the biography Hank about Charles Bukowski, told of how one day the two were walking by the Caffé Trieste. Bukowski looked inside at the regulars hanging out, paused, and famously said: “All these guys waiting for something to happen. Only it never will.”
But, of course, they were not all guys. Her own works are more often than not recalled as being by “T. Walden” or “t. Walden.”
One of the central women in this mix of creative people, who has lived into this century, is the Beat poet-painter-publisher Tisa Walden.
Walden lived with “the wonderful poet” Howard Hart (pictured above) for 20 years until his death at 75, after a long battle with cancer in 2002. Hart’s poetry readings and jazz performances with Jack Kerouac, Philip Lamantia, and David Amram in New York City, 1957 & 1958, were important early Beat influences, before he moved to San Francisco.
T. Walden was raised in Washington D.C. and attended the University of Maryland, where she received a BA in Art History. She moved to San Francisco at 23 where she encountered the lively poetry scene of North Beach — reading for the first time publicly with Corso, Ferlinghetti, Kaufman, Kyger, Hart and others in 1980. Then she went on to found Deep Forest Press — at first a chapbook series, which is still publishing today with over sixty titles to its credit. She received an MA at San Francisco State University in English Literature.
Her book of poems, Fire Road was published by City Light Books in 1988, “in loving memory of my grandfather Horace Regions,” subtitled The Accordion Series No. 3. Other titles include Blue Junk, Perfumes, and Twilight.
PUCK
Go out in the cover of darkness
Sliver of moon through the open window
To the wild roses blooming in the schoolyard
Sweet scent of the Lemon Orchard
Sting of a spider? Thorn prick?
Suck and swallow blood
Mid-Summer night
Flower
T. Walden, 08.20.2006, Otoliths A Magazine of Many E-Things, ISSN 1833-623X
Tisa Walden, a poet and painter, had become a publisher in the early Beat movement, and historians are today seeking her out for her rememberances and photographs of those early San Francisco times. She formerly taught with other Beat writers and artists at the New College of California.
T. Walden has lived in the absorbing San Francisco world of Beat poets, musicians, and painters. However, recently, she became aware of the world of cryptozoology, in the persona of Bill and Bob Clark. The Clark brothers are the San Francisco twins who saw a Sea Serpent in San Francisco Bay in 1985. Their story is retold on page 69 of the Coleman-Huyghe field guide on watery cryptids. Later, at another time, in search of more observations of their quest, the Clarks took some video that has been discussed here.
This illustration (above) from the early 1800s’ sighting of a Sea Serpent off the coast of New England is compared with a video capture (below) from the Clarks’ 2004 Sea Serpent videotape taken off of California.
When Tisa Walden learned of the Clarks, she finally decided to talk to someone about a sighting of a Sea Serpent she had years ago.
After Walden told the Clarks of what she saw, she followed up in a series of emails to the Clarks, she told them of her remembrances of her encounter.
Walden wrote them (in three emails here combined into one narrative):
My guess is I saw it in 1985 — yesterday for the first time I called my father in Virginia and told him, plus another friend in D.C. and then I called the mother of the 5 year old boy I mentioned who also saw it. . .asked her when it was and she wasn’t sure. . .couldn’t say what time of year. . .asked her to ask her son who now lives in Las Vegas if he remembered. . .
I’m a painter and a poet from old farmer stock in Mississippi and Dad and I both agree we are particularly observant when it comes to nature. . .
Like I say — I saw it — I believe myself — I still remember it and it is exactly as you describe. . .was huge. . .
***
I was looking at the map today trying to remember exactly where I had my sighting — and pin-pointed the area of Bayside Drive 101 that runs along the water prior to Candlestick Park. Right there….
Many times I’ve had occasion to ride that stretch of highway in a cab coming back from the airport and many times over the years have thought of what I saw.
***
One, if there are babies etc. this was a granddaddy — just huge. Two, it was extremely stationary either like it was coiled to strike, or resting. I believe that it’s length was resting on the bottom of the cove to stabilize it. Three, the head was more “dragonlike” and large rather than rounded. Again, it was night, and the thing stood out vividly, and unmistakably organic against the water in the moonlight. Two enormous coils rising up out of the surface of the water.
Later, Walden shared: “I was saying to my 83 year old father in Va. who was a Pultizer Prize nominee for editorship of a newspaper in the South that I had never told anyone because what I saw was so fantastic it would be like trying to convince people you’d been abducted by aliens. It’s important to me that you guys know that I have no need for publicity, or attention but am sincerely interested in helping to substantiate your claim for reasons of science.”
When I talked to the Clarks about publishing her sighting, I let them know I had discovered what I thought was the historical celebrity status of Tisa Walden. I asked them to double-check with her, to see if she was whom I thought she was, and about using her name. She confirmed that she was the poet-painter I had found biographical info about, and that she was giving permission to use her name, so it won’t just be another anonymous “monster eyewitness.”
Tisa Walden also did a quick sketch of what recalls she saw, at my request. It follows. Walden said she saw this Sea Serpent when she was a passenger in the rear seat of a car which was going north on highway 101 in 1985.
- Similar Phenomena:
There is a consistency to the descriptions of this particular type of sea serpent. Undulating swimming motion, 60-80 feet in length, holding neck and head out of the water, and a maned horse head are all terms used from Maine to the Pacific Northwest. I’ve read these words so many times over the years it’s like hearing from an old friend. (See here.)
I hate to wish death on any creature, but, if only one would wash up today, imagine how that would rock the foundations of the sceptic’s world.
Awesome. Here is someone who doesn’t need the limelight and comes forth with a very interesting sighting.
I’m sure everyone has questions, like I do. What time of day? How close to the creature? Close enough to hear sounds? Why the comment that it was coiled below the surface, when something of that size could float and still be stationary, in a cove especially?
Actually, her idea of coiling below the surface is of interest to me. She does show definite spacing below the humps or coils. There could be a large, full-bodied, not serpentine, creature below the surface. Also, I find her comment of a ”dragonlike” head, rather than snake-like, very interesting.
I tend to agree to MountDesertIslander. While I would not wish death on a creature like this, I admit I would not be devastated if one were to “wash up dead” on the shore. At least the “proof” would end tons of speculation and change the nature of Zoology and Human Belief forever.
Great story on Ms. Walden’s “sighting.”
Makes one wonder what other “celebrities” have seen and chosen not to report. If so, disclosure of said sightings would definitely help in “legitimizing” Cryptozoology and Eyewitness testimony.
Nice sketch. The serpent looks so friendly. Either that or satisfied with its latest meal.
I sometimes wonder if people pay attention to what they are reading before they decide to add their comments. The question was asked about the time of day when she said it was at night. She also gives a pretty good description of where she was in location to where it was when she said she was sitting in the backseat of a car heading north on Highway 101 just before Candlestick Park.
That’s what I have always found fascinating and illuminating about cryptids. There is no one spectrum of person who has encounters with them…land going or sea going. And that is also the illuminating part…it is not a mind set or a specific personality type, or a specific type of person that has encounters…and that is a big part of what serves as evidence for me that cryptids (and especially the big three…or five…or is it more:) exist.
It is not always frightened people jumping to conclusions, and unreliable people who are just excited and want to tell tall tales, and it not all hoaxers looking for their 15 minutes of fame. It is something real, and just because we don’t have a carcass yet, does not dissuade me of the existence of these critters.
Again, it is an age old argument between cryptos and scoftics. It won’t be solved until we have a carcass, and even after it will just open the door to all kinds of previously ignored cryptids.
In the meantime, I have enough evidence to keep coming back here, continue to research and someday soon, do my own field research.
There is a wonderful if somewhat sad report of the killing of a sea monster by the Victorian Daily Colonist newspaper published in British Columbia on 17 September 1902. It took place in Japan and the news was brought in by The Empress of India, just arrived in port. Reported in the same newspaper.
The creatures described might well be the same as those seen by Tisa Walden, except smaller (measured at 48ft and 30ft), though hers is an estimated length. Her sketch seems to have long ears and possibly a horn. The body is coiled or arched above the water line, also how the Japanese creature is described. A rather special feature.
The graphic report in the British Columbian newspaper is well worth looking at. I have given a link here but not sure if it works, as it generates the entire newspaper for that date.
I wonder if Japanese cryptozoologists are aware of this report and maybe done some follow up?
Very cool, I look forward to hearing more!
The Clark vidcap appears to be a net with floats though
Re: Archer1945
Actually, moonlight doesn’t answer my question, what time of day. 9:00 P.M.? 2:00 A.M.? Also, the account does not say she was traveling in the back of a car at the time of the sighting.
She said: Many times I’ve had occasion to ride that stretch of highway in a cab coming back from the airport and many times over the years have thought of what I saw.
You are probably right, but it isn’t what she said. Also, Bay Drive 101 doesn’t mean much to me because I have never been there, though I did look it up. Details are important, at least to me.
That is totally Allen Ginsberg in the photo. Glasses, thinning hair, thick beard… classic Ginsberg.