When I Was Cool
When I Was Cool From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search When I Was Cool: My Life at the Jack Kerouac School is Sam Kashner 's autobiographical account of his experience as the first student at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics [1] , which was founded by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman in honor of their late friend, Jack Kerouac . As he describes in his book, Kashner was a disgruntled Long Island teenager in the 1970s who was obsessed with the poetry and prose of the Beat generation of the 1950s. Kashner's book provides a glimpse into the lives and creative processes of his teachers at the Jack Kerouac School, including Anne Waldman , Allen Ginsberg , William S. Burroughs and Gregory Corso . Among the various and curious details of life with the Beats, Kashner describes several of Ginsberg's unfinished poems that he asks Kashner to complete. He also recalls t