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Introduction
Another such event was the poetry reading
at the Gallery Six in San Francisco. After World War II and the
explosion of the Atom bomb there was a very strong conservative,
materialistic, and deterministic (and some other -istics) sense
in America. There was also a growing voice, a murmur, of spirituality
and personal freedom. These forces were growing on each coast.
The embodiment of this spirit was once again in the writers and
poets. On an October night in 1955 this spirit broke loose and
entered the world consciousness. The Gallery Six Reading - Some Facts The Six Gallery reading was a poetry-reading at the Six Gallery on Friday, October 7, 1955 at 3119 Fillmore Street in San Francisco. Before the gallery was used for art and poetry, it was an auto repair shop, and last reported is was a rug store. The Six Gallery reading, an idea of Wally Hedreck, became known as the event that launched the Beat Generation. The reading showcased works by Allen Ginsberg, Philip Lamantia, Michael McClure, Gary Snyder, and Philip Whalen. Mr. Lamantia read poems by his dead friend John Hoffman. Mr. McClure read "Point Lobos Animism" and "For the Death of 100 Whales". Mr. Snyder read '"A Berry Feast". Mr. Whalen read "Plus Ca Change". Allen Ginsberg first presented his famous poem "Howl". There had been a number of readings and
art shows prior to the October date. Mr. Hedrick, a painter and
veteran of the Korean War, approached Mr. Ginsberg as early as
the summer of 1955 and asked him to organize a poetry reading
at the Six Gallery. At first, Ginsberg refused. However, at the
behest of some of the west coast poets he changed his mind after
completing a draft of "Howl". The upwards of 150 people
in the gallery and exuberant audience included Jack Kerouac,
who refused to read his own work but cheered the other poets
on, during their performances. Mr. Kerouac immortalized much
of what occurred at the reading in his account of it in his novel
The Dharma Bums. The Gallery Six Reading - Some Facts as I see Them The Six Gallery reading (also known as
the Gallery Six reading or Six Angels in the Philip Lamantia (October 23, 1927 - March 7, 2005) a poet and lecturer read poems by his dead friend John Hoffman. Mr. Lamantia's poetry has been described as visionary, ecstatic, terror-filled, and erotic, which explores the subconscious world of dreams linked with daily life. Mr. Lamantia read poems by his dead friend John Hoffman. John Hoffman, a virtually unknown figure flits through certain lines of Howl and haunts the periphery of Beat writing. All of Mr. Hoffman's known writings are included under the title Journey to the End a coda to Mr. Lamantia's own poems. Mr. Hoffman's poems are described as showing a restraint, an elegance, an ease with lyric thought, and an apocalyptic edge which seems like breaking news from somewhere in the world.
Michael McClure, born in Kansas, began writing free verse and after his immersion in modernism he grew more interested in perfecting such traditional poetic forms as villanelles, sonnets, and sestinas. One of San Francisco's lures was the distinguished faculty at the California School of Fine Arts (later the San Francisco Art Institute). Mr. McClure moved to San Francisco in 1954. Michael McClure (visit his home page: http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/mcclure/mcclure.htm) read "Point Lobos Animism" and "For the Death of 100 Whales".
Gary Snyder was born in 1930 in San Francisco. However, because of the social destruction of the Great Depression of the 1930s his family moved to the state of Washington. He spent his early formative years there developing a great love and appreciation for nature, native Americans, and learning. Like so many great American poets (Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, etc.) one of Mr. Snyder's boyhood jobs was as at a local newspaper, as copy-boy. Gary Snyder read "A Berry Feast".
Philip Whalen (Mr. Whalen's home page: http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/whalen/) born in Portland, Oregon 1923, a WW2 veteran became interested in Eastern religions after his release from the army in 1946. He visited the Vedanta Society in Portland, but did not pursue this very far, because of the expense of attending their countryside ashram. Tibetan Buddhism attracted him, but he found it "unnecessarily complicated". In 1952, Gary Snyder lent him books on Zen. He read his poem, "Plus Ça Change".
It was at this reading that Allen Ginsberg (http://www.allenginsberg.org/) first presented his famous poem Howl. Allen Ginsberg was born in New Jersey in 1926 and while he was attending Columbia University in NYC befriended the future Beat writers Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and John Clellon Holmes. Mr. Ginsberg's mentor William Carlos Williams wrote an introductory letter to San Francisco Renaissance figurehead Kenneth Rexroth. http://christiancrumlish.com/ezone/ez/e2/sounds/howl.html hear Allen Ginsberg read some of Howl
The exuberant audience included Jack Kerouac, who refused to read his own work but cheered the other poets on, shouting "Yeah! Go! Go!" during their performances. Mr. Kerouac was able to recall much of what occurred at the reading, and wrote an account that he included in his novel The Dharma Bums.
Many other people were in the crowd that night who became leaders of or proponents of Beat Literature including Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who telegrammed Mr. Ginsberg the following day offering to publish his work. Neal Cassady passed around the wine jug and a collection plate. Also there was Ann Charters, then a UC Berkeley college student. It was this night that Ms. Charters first met Mr. Kerouac, the subject of her best known work, the biography Kerouac (1973). I hope that this introduction to an event
that changed everything has peeked your interest. Even if you
didn't know that you were effected by this reading, it changed
the way that America looked at itself. I hope that I've opened
a door or at least a window and that you'll now want to look
a little closer. © Harry Furness 2009 Send Harry a message either directly or using the Word Catalyst feedback form. For more from Harry visit the Word Catalyst archives or his online home; or frohawk. |
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Songs for the Soul
Greetings
- Welcome back... And thanks for showing up again. This month
I would like to use my short-range way-back machine and hope
that you will enjoy a not-so-distant event that set the tone
for poetry in the second half of the 20th Century. There happens
every now and then an event that is not only the culmination
of personalities but a confluence of energies that sets in motion
an entire voice in literature and culture. One such time was
when Lord George Gordon Byron, Percy Blythe Shelley, and Mary
Wollstonecraft Shelley took a villa in the Alps and set about
telling each other ghost stories and tales of the courage of
man. This fired off entire gothic industry, which is still alive
and well today.
Same
Performance) was a poetry-reading ( or "-jamming"),
which occurred at the Six Gallery on Friday, October 7, 1955
at 3119 Fillmore Street in San Francisco. Conceived by Wally
Hedrick, this event was the first important public manifestation
of the Beat Generation and helped to herald the West Coast literary
revolution that became known as the San Francisco Renaissance.
During the reading, five talented new poets who were known only
within a close company of friends and others read their poetry
to a cheering crowd. The poets were introduced by Kenneth Rexroth,
a San Francisco poet of an older generation who was a kind of
literary father-figure for the younger poets and had helped to
foment their burgeoning community through personal introductions
at his weekly salon. The Six Gallery reading was a seminal early
gathering of such now-famous writers as Allen Ginsberg, Philip
Lamantia, Michael McClure, Gary Snyder, and Philip Whalen.
From The Attic
Cheshire Cat
Truly Calhoun
Songs of