What Is Lamb Stew?

The tile of this magazine and blog is an admittedly obscure allusion to the popular epic-length poem by Allen Ginsberg, Howl. To those not familiar with this work, it begins:

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night…”

—and amongst the howling lines, each describing a person or a group of people who were important to Ginsberg’s life (or were Ginsberg himself), one reads:

“…who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery…”

So, although this magazine endorses a vegetarian lifestyle when possible, there is something profound about that metaphor that “lentil soup of the imagination” could not have provided. It is perhaps the sacrifice of the animal, like the sacrifices of the artist, that makes it so rich.

Also, this publication does endorse the work of Ginsberg and similar artists. So check it out.

Lamb Stew aims to be eclectic, full of a variety of flavors, while at the same time having a sense of unity between the work that creates a magazine that is more than a sum of its parts.

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