October 7, 1955

The Answer was HOWLing in the Wind

From the San Francisco Chronicle article by
Heidi Benson, Chronicle Staff Writer [excerpts]

Practically the first thing Allen Ginsberg did when he hit San Francisco was to seek out poet Kenneth Rexroth, whose Friday night literary salons were legendary.

"What's happening? Who's interesting? What's going on?" asked Ginsberg, 29, fresh out of Columbia University in black horn-rim glasses and a sack suit.

It was 1955. The San Francisco Poetry Renaissance was in full swing, with the erudite Rexroth and poet Robert Duncan of San Francisco State at the white-hot center.

Fueled by various stimulants, fellowship and a near-mystical belief that the world must change and poetry was the way to do it, this group coalesced and staged a reading on Oct. 7, 1955 -- at the Six Gallery on Fillmore Street -- that has gone down in history as the moment of conception of the Beat movement.

No photographs of the evening have turned up, but by all accounts, when 150 to 200 people showed up at this low-ceilinged former auto-body shop in response to hastily printed postcards, the size of the crowd astonished everybody.

Rexroth served as master of ceremonies that Friday night. Kerouac, who had declined to read, brought jugs of burgundy to share. First to take the orange-crate podium was San Francisco-born Surrealist poet Philip Lamantia, who read poems by John Hoffman, a friend who had just died.

Next up was Michael McClure, reading "Point Lobos: Animism" and "For the Death of 100 Whales," both presaging the animal-rights movement. Then came Philip Whalen, a friend of Snyder's from Reed College and later a Zen monk, reading his poem "Plus Ca Change."
(On this night, McClure first met Whalen and Snyder.)

Then Ginsberg took the stage, drunk, some say, and visibly nervous. Kerouac urged him on, hollering "Go! Go! Go!" as the poem gained momentum...

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