San Francisco Renaissance

The San Francisco Renaissance is the name given to the explosion of a new kind of poetic activity that began in San Francisco in the mid-1950s. It marked a reaction against the dominance of formal, academic poetry in favor of freer, more experimental forms. Poets associated with the new movement included Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Robert Duncan, and Jack Spicer. On October 7, 1955, several of these poets participated in a famous poetry reading at Six Gallery. It was the first public reading of Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl, which was published the following year by City Lights Books. City Lights was a bookstore and small publishing house set up by another San Francisco poet, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who would go on to publish many of the “Beat” poets, as Ginsberg, Snyder, and others became known. Howl called attention to the side of American life that...