Janine Pommy Vega
Janine Pommy Vega was a notable Beat poet born in 1942 in Union City, New Jersey. She became involved with the Beat movement during her teenage years, drawn by a desire for adventure rather than rebellion. Vega formed connections with influential figures such as Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac, which helped shape her literary journey. Despite facing personal challenges, including struggles with addiction and the loss of loved ones, she remained committed to her writing. Her first collection, "Poems to Fernando," published by City Lights, was inspired by her relationship with Peruvian painter Fernando Vega, whom she married. Following his death and a tumultuous period in her life, Vega's work continued to reflect themes of travel, loss, and spiritual exploration, leading to further publications like "Journal of A Hermit." Beyond her poetry, she contributed to education and cultural programs, teaching poetry in various settings, including schools and correctional facilities. Vega’s life and work reveal the complex interplay of personal experience and artistic expression within the Beat movement.
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Subject Terms
Janine Pommy Vega
Poet
- Born: February 5, 1942
- Birthplace: Jersey City, New Jersey
- Died: December 23, 2010
Biography
Beat poet Janine Pommy Vega was born in Union City, New Jersey, in 1942 and began hanging out in New York’s Greenwich Village when she was fifteen years old, trying to associate with the Beat movement. Her childhood was happy and she was not joining the movement out of rebellion but instead out of wanderlust and the desire for unusual experiences. She was friends with Gregory Corso and through him met the most significant Beat writers, including Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac.
In 1959, she took a job at the Bizarre Coffeeshop in Greenwich Village, travelling back and forth to finish high school. She graduated in 1960, at the top of her class, and immediately moved permanently to New York, sharing apartments first with Herbert Huncke and then Elise Cowan before becoming lovers with Peter Orlovsky. Orlovsky taught her about poetry and started her writing, but when he abandoned her to travel to India with Allen Ginsberg, Janine turned away from the inner circle of the Beats, living next with Bill Heine and coming dangerously close either to being arrested or overdosing on the constant stream of amphetamines that Heine’s street friends brought into their apartment. After Heine and several others were arrested while Janine was at work, she lived on the street herself for a brief period in the summer of 1961. She met up again with Heine when he was released from jail and became involved again in amphetamines—but none of these difficulties stopped her from writing.
In early 1962, at the age of twenty, Janine met and fell in love with the Peruvian painter Fernando Vega, who would be immortalized in her first book of published poems, Poems to Fernando, completed in 1968. The connection with Fernando allowed Janine to make a clean break from Heine, and they travelled to Israel later in 1962, marrying shortly thereafter. She and Fernando supported each other and were both able to focus on their art, but they eventually became involved in the heroin habit that would first commit Fernando to an insane asylum and then result in his death. After his death, Janine returned to New York, resuming her decadent life for a short while—even supporting her heroin habit by prostitution—before Ferlinghetti accepted Poems to Fernando for publication at the significant Beat publisher City Lights. She travelled to San Francisco, living there for a year before returning to New York to attend the Woodstock concert in 1969.
When the lease on her house at Woodstock was up in 1970, she went to Peru, becoming involved with Indian religious practices while at the temple at Pachacamac. She taught English in Bogotá, Columbia, saving money to return first to Peru and then the United States, and writing her second book, whose working title was Visions, Tales, and Lovesongs. It was printed as Journal of A Hermit in 1975. After a brief time in New York and a short term in Peru, she began extensive travelling again, touring the United States and globally to give readings and eventually concerts on college campuses with her band, Tiamalu. In 1980 she was in a devastating automobile accident and travelled to Europe to recuperate. The themes of travelling away from home and returning to a place permeate her poetry, as do representations of “closing doors”—Vega’s way of expressing the feeling of loss when loved ones, such as Fernando and her parents, die.
Vega continued to write poetry drawing from her experiences: in 1997, City Lights published a collection of essays called Tracking the Serpent, recounting her travels in the Amazon, Andes and Himalayamountains in search of shamans and spiritual inspiration. She lived in the Catskill mountain region of New York State. She was active for the better part of two decades in educational programs, including Teachers and Writers, The Writer’s Voice, The New York City Ballet, and Poets in the Schools. She also taught kindergarten through twelfth grades in English and Spanish through Alternative Literacy Programs and taught poetry and poetry composition to prisoners in the New York State Correctional system.