Allen Ginsberg 'Howl'ed in San Francisco

It is the birthday of Beat poet Allen Ginsberg (1926), who wrote the epic poem Howl (1956), which he first read publicly on October 5, 1955 at the Six Gallery in San Francisco. After Ginsberg’s friend Lawrence Ferlinghetti publish it, the work caused an uproar for explicit depiction of sex acts but was eventually ruled not obscene in court. The poem includes stories about Ginsberg’s Beat friends Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Lucien Carr and others. Here is a recording of Ginsberg reading the first part of the Howl.

Happy birthday, storyteller Herbert Huncke

It is the birthday of Beat storyteller Herbert Huncke (1915), who was a denizen of New York's 42nd Street in the 1940s and was immortalized in William S. Burroughs' Junkie (1953), Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957) and Desolation Angels (1965). His books include Huncke's Journal (1965), The Evening Sun Turned Crimson (1980), and Guilty of Everything (1990). Here are outtakes from a documentary by Italian filmmaker Francois Bernadi and a link to the completed documentary.

Happy birthday, poet Allen Ginsberg

It is the birthday of Beat Generation poet Allen Ginsberg (1926), who is best remembered for his epic poem, Howl (1956), an extended criticism of conformity and capitalism in the United States. It became a central subject in a celebrated obscenity trial in 1957 for its frank depiction of heterosexual and homosexual sex acts. However, a judge ruled that the work was not obscene. The work contains stories about Ginsberg's friends, including Neal Cassady , Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Peter Orlovsky, Lucien Carr, Herbert Huncke, and Carl Solomon. It was first presented publicly on October 5, 1955 at a reading at the Six Gallery in San Francisco, leaving the audience in awe. City Lights Bookstore owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti subsequently published the poem along with several others in a volume called Howl and Other Poems (1956).

Gary Snyder, the Thoreau of the Beats

It is the birthday of poet and environmental activist Gary Snyder (1930), who became associated with the Beat generation of San Francisco in the 1950s and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1975 for his poetry collection Turtle Island. Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti called him the Thoreau of the Beat Generation. He is described as the poet laureate of deep ecology. Writer Jack Kerouac was inspired by Snyder's dedication to backcountry living to make Snyder the main character in The Dharma Bums (1958). Snyder studied Japanese and Chinese culture, Buddhism, rural life, naturism, and Native American culture. He traveled extensively in Japan and China. He is 83 years old and lives on a hundred acres in the Sierra Nevada foothills in Northern California. "Nature is not a place to visit," he told an interviewer from the London Review of Books last year, "It is home."