BEATS - SHOO BE DOO BAP BA DAH

Ginsberg c.1950's

The Six Gallery Reading (also known as the Gallery Six reading or Six Angels in the Same Performance) was a poetry reading which occurred at the Six Gallery on Friday the 7^th October 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 continued the San Francisco Renaissance.

Wally Hedrick — a painter and co-founder of the Six Gallery – approached Allen Ginsberg (then only 29 years old) in mid-1955 and asked him to organize a poetry reading at the Six Gallery. At first, Ginsberg refused, but once he had written a rough draft of "Howl", he changed his "fucking mind", as he put it. Ginsberg advertised the event as "Six Poets at the Six Gallery". One of the most important events in Beat myth, the event, in essence, brought together the East and West Coast factions of the Beat Generation. Of more personal significance to Ginsberg: that night was the first public reading of "Howl", a poem that brought worldwide fame to Ginsberg and to many of the poets associated with him. An account of that night can be found in Kerouac’s 's novel The Dharma Bums, describing how change was collected from audience members to buy jugs of wine, and Ginsberg reading passionately, drunken, with arms outstretched.

At the reading, four other talented young poets—Philip Lamantia, Michael McClure, Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen—who until then were known mainly within a close company of friends and other writers (such as Lionel Trilling and William Carlos Williams), presented some of their latest works. They 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 establish their burgeoning community through personal introductions at his weekly salon.

Lamantia read poems by his dead friend John Hoffman. McClure read "Point Lobos Animism" and "For the Death of 100 Whales"; Snyder, "A Berry Feast"; and Whalen, "Plus Ça Change."

Snyder

Lamantia

McClure

Whalen