ABSTRACT
Perusal of anthologies of contemporary French literature and poetry suggests that there may not be an established French Beat generation as such. In the late 1970s–early 1980s and into the 1990s it was the Polyphonix festivals that gave the Beat poets the opportunity to make up for the 1950s missed connections with a Beat fellowship of French poets. However, Jouffroy himself recognized the method as altogether contradictory. It is as if the Electric Gang poets had risen out of Pelieu's poem "enfants-collages" to utter their electric yawp. The experimental prose-poet Sylvain Courtoux pledges allegiance to Burroughs in "A User's Notice to Action-writing" (2002) which he published in the avant-garde magazine Fusees. Joel Hubaut shares much of the same impetus. Alain Jegou's work is dense and diverse, encompassing both poetry and prose. For Jegou holiness is called forth yet never explicitly voiced.
