Allen Ginsberg and the 1955 San Francisco Arts Festival
Examining documents claiming Ginsberg first read "Howl" three weeks earlier than previously believed.
The following is an excerpt from my in-progress book about the 6 Gallery reading. Specifically, it is Appendix #2, a short additional essay that contains information I believe is too important to omit but at the same time too difficult to succinctly include in the body of the book without detracting from the narrative. It was too big of an issue even for a footnote, and so I gave a brief overview in the text with a note that it will be discussed more fully in the appendices. I am posting it here well in advance of the book’s publication because I want the Beat community to be aware of an important claim that potentially rewrites Beat history. As you will see, I do not agree with the revised history but it is an extremely compelling account that must be shared and I did not want to wait until the book was released.
Later this year, we will see the 70th anniversary of the 6 Gallery reading. Almost everyone now agrees that the October 7, 1955, event was the first public reading of “Howl.” However, a reliable eyewitness source claims the poem was actually read three weeks earlier. I’m sure that some will disagree with my assessment and I want to go public with this now so that they have a chance to prepare for the coming anniversary, which is to say that they may choose to celebrate September 16th rather than October 7th as the date of the first reading of “Howl.”
Please note also that this is from an early draft of the book. It has not yet been edited by anyone but myself and will probably undergo much revision before publication. It may therefore contain typos and other small errors that (hopefully) will not appear in the published version, and I’m aware there are probably too many digressions. I hope these are interesting and/or useful for those who wish to conduct further research into this interesting area of Beat history. Also, there will be references to earlier parts of the book that may not make complete sense. For example, certain people, publications, or events may have been extensively introduced in the main text and may not be so obvious to those reading this without that context.
An Auditorium in California: Or, The Real First Reading of “Howl”?
Throughout this book, I have attempted to explain the story of the 6 Gallery reading as thoroughly and honestly as possible and that has been a challenge because so much of the history of the building and the event held there was hard to verify. As such, I have frequently presented information in terms of probability rather than certainty. Even if this makes for a slightly clunky narrative at times, I believe it is generally a good approach to history as it allows the reader a fuller picture and even provides them with enough data to disagree with the author’s own conclusion in certain matters. This is especially important when discussing events as shrouded in uncertainty as this one. However, I am aware that sometimes such discussions can detract from the narrative a little too much and I felt that there was one part of this story that deserved to be discussed at length in a separate section. That was the San Francisco Arts Festival and specifically the claim that Allen Ginsberg read “Howl” there about three weeks prior to the 6 Gallery reading. Specifically, I felt the claim was untrue but nonetheless quite plausible. I did not want to spend more than seven thousand words discussing it in the context of the preparations for the 6 Gallery reading, where it would only have detracted from the narrative, so I will instead do that here.
I will state right now that I do not think Ginsberg really read “Howl” at the Arts Festival but the purpose of this short essay is to acknowledge that it is very hard to say what he read and that there is one extremely convincing source—one of only two sources concerning the poetry portion of this particular event—who wrote several times about Ginsberg reading “Howl” on stage at the Nourse Auditorium on September 16. Personally, even though he was an eyewitness and had a very good memory, I think he was mistaken. However, there are several documents he produced, some shortly after that reading and some in the decades that followed, which need to be addressed if this is to be an honest appraisal. Perhaps my focus on the 6 Gallery reading has blinded me to the possibility of Ginsberg reading his poem a few weeks earlier. After all, if “Howl” was not first read at the 6 Gallery, it largely diminishes that event’s importance and thereby minimizes the significance of this book. Evading my own bias on the matter is a major reason why I wanted to discuss this event in more detail and let readers draw their own conclusions. It would be remiss of me not to.
Additionally, a great many people have written about “Howl” and most of them report that the 6 Gallery reading was its first public performance, so if I am wrong and the San Francisco Arts Festival was in fact the first reading, then this information ought to be shared for the benefit of the wider Beat Studies community. The documents to which I refer have only ever been seen by a handful of people and are not cited in any books on the Beat Generation,[1] so hopefully the details shared here will help future generations of scholars to more accurately explore the poem’s development.
In the section that follows, I will closely examine a number of documents produced and collected by Jack Goodwin. These documents span a period of nearly thirty years and include a note written shortly after the poetry reading, another written immediately after the 6 Gallery reading, a memoir written thirteen years later, and some letters from the early 1980s. As you might imagine, the date of each piece of evidence is important, so pay close attention. I will run through these and pass comment where necessary before drawing upon another piece of evidence, which is a letter written by Allen Ginsberg ten days after the Arts Festival. Whereas almost no one has ever seen the Goodwin documents, a small number have viewed this letter. It does not, however, appear in any published collections in spite of its importance.
The First Reading of “Howl”: Considering a Credible Alternative
According to Jack Goodwin, almost certainly the most reliable source of information regarding the 6 Gallery reading and other poetry events of that era, “Howl” was first read at the annual San Francisco Arts Festival on September 16, 1955. This is a date widely recognized by Beat historians as Ginsberg’s first public reading but Goodwin, who was in attendance that day and wrote about it less than a week later, distinctly recalled Ginsberg reading “Howl” rather than—as others have suggested—comparatively short and minor works.
The San Francisco Arts Festival[2] was founded in 1946 by the San Francisco Arts Commission, but as a 1953 program mentioned, this was only the official beginning and in fact artists had been holding their own large-scale arts festivals in the city since at least 1938. These had been astonishingly popular until they were disrupted by the Second World War. After the war ended, the event was made official and even by 1947 it was attracting nearly a half million visitors. It continued to grow in stature, becoming a celebrated annual event that affirmed the city’s enthusiasm for a wide variety of art forms.
In keeping with the city’s liberal attitudes and its acceptance of experimental, challenging artworks, the Arts Festival was ostensibly one of openness and free expression. In the event’s 1951 program, Harold Zellenbach, the president of the commission, wrote the following about the festival’s aims:
It is not the intention of the Art Commission[3] to establish criterias nor to foster an “official” art. Our purpose here is to offer the artists and craftsmen of the Bay Area, in the most democratic fashion, the means of exhibiting their work and thought. It is our purpose to foster and stimulate the integration of the artist within his community, for only then can he work effectively and creatively. Only then can our citizenry lead vital and enriched lives.
Finally, it is our purpose to bring together and promote the integration of the various arts. The gay informal atmosphere of the municipally sponsored Art Festival, unique in the country, has proven to be the most popular vehicle in accomplishing our purpose. The Art Commission, a municipal body, concerned with the aesthetic needs, desires, the resulting well-being of the people therefore considers this annual municipally sponsored event as an important area of its activities.[i]
The event was held annually in September but for various reasons it tended to change locations. In 1954, it had been held at Aquatic Park, in the north of San Francisco, near Fisherman’s Wharf, and generally it was perceived as an outdoor event. This was where the six founders of the 6 Gallery had staged their fundraising event a little over a month prior to opening the gallery. However, in 1955 the venue chosen to host most of the event was Civic Auditorium (now Bill Graham Civic Auditorium) and the performance arts portion of the festival was held a few blocks west at Nourse Auditorium. This Spanish revival building is presently known as the Sydney Goldstein Theater, and it had functioned as a school auditorium until it closed in 1952, after which it was used intermittently for cultural events until 1985 when it became a courtroom and then for several decades a storage facility. It was restored and reopened as a theater in 2013.[ii]
In the months leading up to the Arts Festival, the local media questioned the change of venue and many people were critical when it opened. In fact, the Arts Commission had nearly canceled this section of the event at the last moment due to problems with the equipment at the venue, but after considering the preparations made by a great many dancers, musicians, and poets, they instead raised funds to fix certain problems.[iii] On the final day, the San Francisco Examiner summed it up, saying:
this year’s move indoors has had mixed results. The show is now safe from wind and weather. On the other hand, its attendance, while pretty lively, appears to be considerably smaller than its outdoor crowds have been in Union Square.[iv]
They went on to say that the “indoor setting [may have had] something to do with the distinct improvement in this year’s fine arts standards” and mentioned other interesting or positive art forms (citing blacksmithing and glassblowing as welcome new additions, alongside landscape design, architecture, and pottery), but noted one particular failure:
Location of most of the stage programs (ballet, theater, concert and poetry readings) in Nourse Auditorium seems to have been a flop. The Nourse is three blocks away from the Civic Auditorium. The festive spirit and crowds don’t reach that far. Maybe in the future, the local stage arts ought to settle down somewhere for a festival of their own.[v]
In spite of that critical account, the Arts Commission’s internal documents showed that they believed the “performance arts” portion of the event had been a success. Over a four-day period, the Nourse Auditorium attracted 6,900 people, and it seems that on at least one of the days (Saturday), the building had been very nearly packed to capacity.[vi] However, there exist no detailed reports on the poetry reading and most coverage of the Arts Festival itself tended to focus on the unwelcome change of venue and another controversy that was generated when one artist’s work openly criticized Vice-President Richard Nixon. This caused such a storm, in fact, that the Arts Commission removed the work, drawing accusations of hypocrisy. This act of censorship received much condemnation, eventually becoming national news. Even Nixon defended the artist and his right to free expression, saying, “One of the sacred precepts of our legal heritage is the right of the individual to criticize public officials. […] The people should not be denied full opportunity to hear or see his expression of that opinion.”[vii] However, the Arts Commission president, Harold Zellenbach, was resolute and repeatedly stated that the Arts Festival was no place for partisan politics. It should be noted that this was the same man who wrote the above statement about the importance of allowing artists the freedom to express themselves.
Aside from general commentary about the event and its organization, and various opinion pieces concerning the Arts Commission’s regrettable censorship, there was little in the media about the specifics of the 1955 festival and sadly only the programs from 1951 and 1953 have been preserved. However, once again it is Jack Goodwin we can thank for chronicling this little piece of literary history. He saved the page of the program that shows the Nourse Auditorium itinerary for September 15 and 16 and also wrote a letter, less than a week later, describing the event.
Goodwin’s latest play The Pizza Pusher was performed at Nourse Auditorium on September 15. It had played at the hungry i club a month earlier, where it was stage managed by Zekial Marko,[4] and Marko reprised this role at the Arts Festival. Not long after, Goodwin wrote that “[w]e had an audience of about a thousand for Pizza that night and they loved it and I was drunk with power,” noting that Ruth Witt-Diamant had been in the audience and “gave [him] a big rave.”[viii] Later that day, Maya Angelou took to the stage with the BooBam Drum Ensemble. Back then, she was a moderately well-known singer and dancer and had not yet begun her career as a poet. She was managed by BooBam Bamboo Drum Company founder Gerd Stern, who by coincidence had been in a mental hospital with Ginsberg and Carl Solomon and knew Bern Porter and others from the Sausalito scene. Stern was also Angelou’s boyfriend and they lived together for “some time” until an explosive breakup.[ix]
On Friday, September 16, between 6 and 7pm, four poets gave a reading: Allen Ginsberg, Jack Gilbert, Jack Nugent, and Guy Wernham. According to Goodwin, the nervous poets received some coaching prior to taking the stage that evening:
Backstage, while everyone was sweating and waiting for curtain time, Marko horned in and coached the poets as they rehearsed and what Marko saw was that in Ginsberg we had a genuine Old Testament prophet, straight out of DeMille. This was to be the first public reading of “Howl,” and Marko made suggestions—about tone, volume, tempo and gesture.[x]
It is important to stress that Goodwin wrote the above words in the 1960s, possibly as late as 1968.[5] This was for an essay titled “Dress Rehearsal: Or, Life Among the Founding Fathers.” In this piece, Goodwin claimed that Marko started the San Francisco Renaissance in part by coaching Ginsberg to read “Howl.” Although he did not give many details, he recalled the performance and mentioned Ginsberg’s poem as being about “Moloch.” From this account, then, we seem to learn two quite astonishing facts:
1. Allen Ginsberg read “Howl” for the first time three weeks earlier than had been previously thought and did so in front of a much bigger audience than is believed to have been at the 6 Gallery.
2. He read not only Part I of “Howl,” as we believe was the case at the 6 Gallery but in fact also Part II, something of which there is no record until 1956.
Whilst this all seems very unlikely, it is far from impossible. Firstly, Goodwin’s testimony is compelling and as he’s the only eyewitness to have come forward, and as he is generally a very reliable source, it seems wise to believe him. As for Part II of “Howl,” Ginsberg had certainly begun work on it by this time. He sent letters quoting the “Moloch” part of his poem at the end of August and mentioning that it would be included in a book version published by City Lights, so there can be little doubt that as of September 16 he had a version of “Howl” in which he had the confidence to go public and which included lines about Moloch.
If we consider time constraints, the early versions of Part II were extremely short and so it is also quite possible that he read “Howl” Part I and Part II on stage that day. With four poets reading for an hour, and Ginsberg taking about 12 to 14 minutes to read Part I, it is not impossible that he read one of the earliest drafts of Part II, which at a fraction of the length of Part I would only have added a minute or two. Thus, if the time had been divided equally between each of the four poets, Ginsberg could certainly have read whatever text of “Howl” he had confidence in at that time.
I am speculating there but certainly Goodwin—who I will reiterate was in the building before and during the reading—claimed that Ginsberg read “Howl.” He even noted this on the schedule although it is likely he wrote this much later. He was not only an eyewitness but, unlike many of the Beat writers, he was a fairly reliable source when drawing upon his memories of the mid-fifties scene. Where others would forget or invent details, Goodwin was able to recall names and places and wrote at length about that era, easily remembering conversations and events with a degree of accuracy most others struggled to achieve. He seems to have done so in part by drawing upon a number of documents he had saved, and in his letters sometimes corrected himself after double- and triple-checking dates and documents. He seemed to have an interest in historical accuracy, chastised others for lacking that motivation, and seldom pushed himself to the center of a story. Born in 1920, he was older than most of the artists active at the time and he recognized that he was in a special environment, so he wrote short descriptive passages that he saved for decades as a means of preserving those memories, and when he was asked by a biographer for details about Jack Spicer, The Place, Allen Ginsberg, the beatnik phenomenon, and the San Francisco Renaissance, he was able to pull from his own memory but also confirm these against his own saved letters. As such, we should not immediately dismiss his claims about the Arts Festival and “Howl” as based upon flawed memory.
That said, I must note that his memory was not perfect and he sometimes made mistakes when remembering details years later. His memories of the 6 Gallery, for example, raise questions. He spoke of the gallery as being an L-shaped basement but it was neither L-shaped nor a basement. Certainly, it was an unusual shape and I suppose his description could be an odd interpretation of that, but it was not a basement. One might argue over whether it could be called the first or ground floor, but it was certainly not below ground even if it had a subterranean vibe. He remembers Philip Whalen saying “camp, camp, camp,” during one of his poems but it is hard to see where that might have come from given that no such line appeared in the poems he read or is likely to have read that night.
Considering this issue of memory, it is important to acknowledge that he only claimed Ginsberg read “Howl” much later and the documents he actually produced at the time only noted that the poet had read something impressive and perhaps a bit daring. The letters Goodwin wrote were mostly to John Allen Ryan, who was in Mexico for almost the whole second half of 1955. On September 21, just five days after the reading at the Nourse Auditorium, Goodwin wrote him:
One of the poetry-readings I saw at the fiesta de los artes was a most risable gas. At the table on the stage of the Nourse Auditorium was seated a most ill-assorted panel of literati. From right to left: Jack Nugent (the baseball poet), Ginsberg, Jack Gilbert, and Wernham fresh from a fix at the Alcoholics’ Clinic and dressed like a poet. Nugent began by informing the audience that sentiment makes the world go round (sic),[6] and then with a just-plain-folks kind of leer, he lit into a couple of Nick Kenny style of things about Isn’t it great to have had a great guy like Joe Lewis in there punching for us Americans. Ginsberg and Gilbert sat there biting their lips and shuddering, while I devoted myself to stilling the uncouth mirth of Marko and Harmon on either side of me in the front row. It was a real instance of double-edged poetic justice, because after Nugent finished, he in turn had to sit thru the free-form eroticism of Ginsberg and Gilbert, which to him probably seemed like the most unwholesome thing since Whitman. Actually they were thrilling, both of them G’s. I don’t know whether you’ve met Gilbert, but on the stage with his flashing blue eyes he looks the perfect image of the romantic poet. I hadn’t dug Ginsberg before, and he really comes on.[xi]
Let’s take a moment to dissect this. Given that Goodwin later recalled Ginsberg reading “Howl,” one might jump to the conclusion from this description that he had indeed read that landmark poem, but he did not specifically name “Howl,” nor did he give any detail that strongly indicated that was the poem read. Admittedly, he would also fail to use the poem’s name a few weeks later when writing a much lengthier description of the 6 Gallery reading, but in that account he was very clearly referring to Ginsberg’s most famous poem. Here, we are left only with a few clues to examine. In fact, we have three pieces of information and none are particularly useful:
1. Ginsberg read something like “free-form eroticism.”
2. It may have seemed “like the most unwholesome thing since Whitman.”
3. He “really comes on.”
His reference to “the free-form eroticism of Ginsberg” certainly makes it seem—at least in hindsight—as though he had read “Howl,” and Goodwin mentioned later in that same letter the following conversation, which suggests some good-natured jousting between Ginsberg and Wernham:
They had to call a dirty-word conference before the reading. “Well, I don’t know,” said Ginsberg, “but I’m going to say ‘come.’” “Well,” insisted Wernham, “I’ve got to say Piss.” etc. etc. They did. And appeared to be enjoying it.[xii]
If it is a reasonably faithful recollection of the conversation (and that is hardly guaranteed), then could Ginsberg have been referring to the following line from “Howl”?
a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness
“Come” is certainly not the rudest word in that line, but then this comes from the published version and Ginsberg was likely reading from something closer to what we now know as draft #2 or #3 of “Howl.” Had he read from typed draft #2, it would have read:
a vision of ultimate jazz eluding the last come of consciousness
Still, that would not be the rudest word in the poem unless Ginsberg engaged in some degree of self-censorship (which admittedly he did later in 1955 when reading at the San Francisco Poetry Center). Plus, it is more likely that he was reading from a manuscript closer to draft #3, by which time he had included “cunt” in that line.
In his mid-sixties recollection, “Dress Rehearsal,” Goodwin recalled:
The result was electrifying. Ginsberg shouted, wept, chanted and mopped his brow, with a telling little Marko gesture across the forehead on the word “lobotomy.” The message was drearily familiar but the presentation was hair-raising.[xiii]
It is specific and therefore believable, but can we trust it? Did Ginsberg really say “lobotomy” or did Goodwin remember that because of later hearing and reading “Howl” at the 6 Gallery and elsewhere? Did he remember hearing “Moloch” for the same reason? In his description of the second reading, written October 8, he mentions Ginsberg shouting and chanting and it being extremely “hot and sweaty.” In fact, the above description is rather similar to his account of the 6 Gallery reading and one wonders if he had perhaps combined the two events in the same way that many eyewitnesses mixed together the 6 Gallery reading and the Berkeley Town Hall reading. Goodwin attended many other readings that year, too, and so if he did not conflate the 6 Gallery reading with the Nourse one, perhaps he accidentally borrowed from another event.
Taken together, and given just a cursory reading, Goodwin’s two documents seem like conclusive proof that Ginsberg read “Howl” that day, but upon closer inspection we only know that he read “free-form eroticism” that may have included the word “come” and that later, when looking back upon a vibrant scene, he remembered the poem as “Howl,” one that he heard a few weeks later and described in very similar terms. Considering how myth-like the 6 Gallery reading was and how many inconsistencies and uncertainties surround the writing of “Howl,” it is tempting to believe Goodwin and view this as an essential document upending the official story. In other words, we could choose to believe that Ginsberg forgot about the Arts Festival reading or that he chose the 6 Gallery as part of his personal mythology because it was more befitting his bohemian, outlaw-poet credentials. However, it does not seem very likely. A likelier explanation is that he later transposed his memory of another “Howl” reading onto this reading, where Ginsberg read something less incendiary.
I will return to further dissect Goodwin’s testimony but for now it is worth turning to perhaps the only other valuable source regarding the Nourse Auditorium poetry reading, and that is a letter Ginsberg wrote to Robert LaVigne on September 26, ten days after the event. As we have seen in the main text of the book, Ginsberg wrote frustratingly little about these key events, largely due to being carried away by the wild and creative scene and his explosion of poetic output, but he did write to a number of distant friends, including LaVigne, who was at the time staying in Mexico. This letter was not archived alongside the vast bulk of his correspondence but was one of a small number of documents stored at the University of Texas.[7] As a result, it has been generally overlooked by researchers and does not appear in any of his letter collections. In it, Ginsberg quotes the first four lines of “A Supermarket in California” and then tells LaVigne:
I read this poem (about a full page ending with both of us on Charon’s ferry over the Styx) aloud at the Art Festival amid much laughter and applause. Amazed to hear how virile it sounded. I had been afraid it was too much fairy poem.[xiv]
He says nothing else about the Arts Festival. There had been some news about his friends, updates about the San Francisco literary scene, then the four lines of his poem and this short paragraph. That’s all. The way he delivers this news to LaVigne makes it seem as though “A Supermarket in California” was his only poem for that event, unlikely as that may appear. And if you know this poem well, especially if you have heard it read aloud, then it certainly does appear unlikely for it is a very short poem. There are recordings of him performing it in a little over two minutes even going at a slow pace. One biographer claims that Ginsberg “read some of his breezy, funnier poems to that audience”[xv] but cites only the above letter and also erroneously claims that the reading took place at Aquatic Park. It is certainly a reasonable assumption that he read more than just a single two-minute poem, but aside from Goodwin’s account, there is simply nothing else to go on and so it is impossible to say for certain.
How can we reconcile this information with Goodwin’s September 21 account that spoke of Ginsberg’s “free-form eroticism”? What about the claim that he had boasted about swearing, and in particular the word “come”? After all, even if Goodwin later mixed up two readings or somehow created a false reading of “Howl” in his memory, the letter to Ryan soon after the event can hardly be disputed.
I don’t think it’s hard to explain the first point, namely the idea of “A Supermarket in California” being considered “free-form eroticism.” It is true that one has to look rather closely and make certain inferences, but remember that Goodwin—an educated gay man—was recalling this event almost a week later in a letter to another educated gay man. He had likely been impressed by Ginsberg’s poem, which had been literary and witty enough that gay references could have passed over the heads of most audience members. Perhaps he heard the line “I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys,” and five days later remembered the suggestive imagery and homosexual references as more daring than they had been. Certain lines that follow could also be said to suggest gay sex as well. Ginsberg was clearly aware of this as we saw in the above quote about it being perceived as a “fairy poem,” but unless he read an early version that differed from the published one, then there are no “dirty words” and certainly not the word “come.” (The lines quoted in the letter to LaVigne, however, are nearly identical to the published version, so that does seem unlikely.)
Had he perhaps continued to read “Love Poem on a Theme by Whitman,” a work written a year earlier? It is highly erotic and includes the phrase “till the white come flow in the swirling sheets,” so it fits Goodwin’s descriptions. Whilst highly provocative, it is less so than “Howl,” so it might have been something Ginsberg read that evening. He even read this poem first in a reading at Reed College just five months later, one of his first readings outside of San Francisco, again in front of an audience he would not have known or trusted to necessarily understand his work. At that reading, he read both “A Supermarket in California” and “Love Poem on a Theme by Whitman” (albeit under a different title: “Epithalamion”) and so it is not out of the question that he did it at the San Francisco Arts Festival. He was certainly going through a Whitman obsession at the time and may have felt that a number of short works connected by this literary titan made for suitable subject matter. If he was truthful about there being “much laughter and applause,” then likely the audience appreciated that his “Supermarket” poem inverted lines from Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” published 99 years earlier. Would they have reacted favorably to “Love Poem on a Theme by Whitman”? It is hard to say, but where “Howl” would surely have struck them as pornographic, a handful of works about Walt Whitman, even including references to homosexual intercourse, might have been just literary enough to be deemed acceptable.
This is pure conjecture, of course. It attempts to explain how he might have included explicit language and also used up more than two minutes of his allotted time. However, it is also possible that both Ginsberg and Goodwin were right, and that “A Supermarket in California” and “Howl” were read together. That would have pushed the time to about 15 minutes and also satisfied the criteria for provocative words, whilst validating Goodwin’s later memories. But I also find this quite unlikely as Ginsberg failed to mention it to LaVigne, who was aware of Ginsberg’s work on “Howl.”
Ginsberg had sent his painter friend an excerpt from “Howl” some weeks earlier, even saying, “I have 5 pages of this to read at the arts festival.”[xvi] One might think that is yet more proof that he read “Howl,” but I think it is quite the opposite. Although short, his post-Arts Festival letter was fairly comprehensive and explained for a friend his latest poetic accomplishment and the most important happenings in the San Francisco Beat poetry circle, so if he had read “Howl,” he would surely have noted this fact. He would’ve considered it a great milestone in his poetic life—something to share with a friend whom he kept updated about such matters. LaVigne had been one of the few to learn about “Howl” in August and Ginsberg wanted his respect and approval, so a public reading undoubtedly would have earned at least a sentence or two in this letter. Indeed, his letters at this point often highlighted developments with “Howl,” casually bragging about breakthroughs and publishing opportunities. If he’d read it in front of a thousand or more people—even if the reception had been negative or ambivalent—he would not have failed to note this. However, when he writes, “I read this poem aloud at the Art Festival amid much laughter and applause,” it strongly implies that he read it and nothing else.
And that brings up the fact that this was a very different reading from the one at the 6 Gallery a few weeks later. The Arts Festival was a public event sponsored by the Arts Commission, which although not exactly a conservative organization was unlikely to approve of the explicit references to gay sex and drug use in “Howl.” Goodwin mentioned in his recollection of the conversation between Ginsberg and Wernham that Ginsberg felt he was being daring by saying “come” and Wernham rivaled that with “piss.” These hardly rank as rude words when compared with lines from “Howl,” such as “who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy.” That is just one of countless examples of language that was risqué for a hipster crowd in an offbeat art gallery, but in front of a crowd that likely numbered 1,500 in a large theater at a tax-funded event, it quite possibly would have resulted in a scandal as great as the one surrounding the artist who had depicted Richard Nixon in an unflattering light and referred to him as “Dick McSmear.” The poetry readings would not merely have been dismissed as “a flop” but derided as obscene. Goodwin also notes in his September 21, 1955, letter that Wernham told the audience: “I’m going to read you a few selections from a syerihs of poms I’ve bean doing concehning DOPE. […] The first one is called H.”[xvii] Goodwin notes there were some “heads” in the audience who got these references but quite possibly the average listener did not know what he was talking about. Controversial as this would have been, it hardly ranks alongside the drug-related content of “Howl,” which would have been easier for the squares to decipher.
Another consideration is that “Howl” was very much a work-in-progress at this point whilst “A Supermarket in California” and other short poems had quickly been composed and completed. Ginsberg had become quite carried away with “Howl” in August, sending lines to some of his friends, but he had soon realized it was not a finalized work and in fact would take a very long time to finish. The more he worked on it, the more he realized that—in spite of Kerouac’s advocacy of spontaneous composition—his poem improved with revision. Part I was being changed in many small ways and Part II was still in its infancy, barely more than a concept as of mid-September. It would go through a great many changes, many of which were quite substantial. He felt confident that “Howl” would be published one day, but it was not ready for the public’s attention just yet, and even after his early readings he continued to write and edit it over many months.
There is one more piece of “evidence” that I would like to present before drawing some conclusions and that is a comment from the letter Jack Goodwin wrote the day after the 6 Gallery reading. It is a letter that many people writing about the Beats have pretended to have read but perhaps only a handful ever have. (They all suspiciously draw from a few scattered lines that were originally quoted by one of three authors to have actually found it and almost every account repeats the same telling typo and another accidental omission that function as a sort of literary “paper town.”) Here, Goodwin said of Ginsberg’s performance that there was “[n]o more of the restraint he featured at the Art Festival; this time he came on like a hissing, wide-grinned gargoyle.”[xviii]
To what extent is this evidence? One could argue that he was talking about Ginsberg’s tone and his style of reading. Perhaps he had been shy and quiet at the Nourse Auditorium but now he read with great confidence. Indeed, Goodwin said “[h]e shouted at the top of his voice,” which supports this theory. However, I think that by “restraint,” he refers more to content. At the Arts Festival, Ginsberg had read a witty poem that snuck sexual content in underneath its literary façade, but now he was bold, brazen, and preaching to his people. In this letter, Goodwin describes “Howl” in some detail. He does not name the poem but talks about it in ways that make it very clear what Ginsberg was reading: “Ginsberg’s main number was a long descriptive roster of out-group,[8] pessimistic dionysian young bohemians and their peculiar and horrible feats.”[xix] Could there be any doubt that this refers to “Howl”? Only “The Names” fits this description and whilst it was textually linked to “Howl,” likely a part of “Howl” that emerged between drafts #2 and #3, it was a short and unimpressive poem that was only expanded and finished years later.
He goes on to tell Ryan that “[t]here was a lot of sex, sailors and language of the cocksuckingmotherfucker variety in it.” Again, this largely confirms that he had heard “Howl” at the 6 Gallery, but it also tells me that this was his first time hearing that poem. If Ginsberg had read it at the Arts Festival, why had Goodwin not mentioned it then? Why had it been merely “free-form eroticism” and why had he only said Ginsberg was daring for using the word “come”? Why was the word “piss” so shocking if he had delivered lines like “with mother finally fucked”? In addition to all that, Goodwin’s description shows him to have been surprised and impressed by Ginsberg’s reading at the 6 Gallery and gives absolutely no indication that he had heard the poem before. His admiration seems entirely based on the quality of the work and its bold language and content rather than the manner in which it was delivered.
Considering all this, I strongly suspect that Goodwin’s accounts are misleading. I think that he heard Ginsberg read “A Supermarket in California” and five days later he slightly overstated the eroticism and risqué language when writing to John Allen Ryan, not out of any intent to mislead but rather as a genuine attempt to recall an exciting poetry reading in the midst of a long arts event featuring many other interesting performances. He was probably not playing up the eroticism (and in fact Goodwin was more likely to do the opposite—he was annoyed by Ryan’s propensity for exaggeration) and instead he most likely did his best to remember Ginsberg’s reading five days later, as well as the content of his conversation with Werham. In that part of the letter, he did seem uncertain and how could he not? He was quoting a random, overheard conversation from nearly a week before that related to poems he had surely never seen written down and had probably only heard read aloud once.
I suspect that the line about Ginsberg’s work “probably [seeming] like the most unwholesome thing since Whitman” to another poet may have been a reference to the fact that “A Supermarket in California” was an homage to the great American bard rather than an indication of Ginsberg having read the 20th century’s equivalent of “Song of Myself.” Years later, looking at the letter and remembering Ginsberg’s much more famous poem, Goodwin probably misremembered certain details—an honest mistake and not unlike the countless mistakes we’ve seen from others in interviews and memoirs. Then, in the early 1980s he continued to write about this false version of events by drawing upon his letter and the mid-sixties memoir, doubling down on the idea of a “Howl” reading in September 1955.
I believe that Allen Ginsberg intended as of late August to read “Howl” in front of an audience at the San Francisco Arts Festival but that he changed his mind in the two or three weeks between that letter and the event. Perhaps this was due to a recognition that his poem was incomplete or perhaps it was due to the potential ramifications of reading lines like “who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,” which was in every draft from the first onwards. Perhaps his decision took into consideration both of these thoughts.
Remember also that by early September he had a new event lined up—the 6 Gallery reading of October 7. I think it is highly probable that he decided to keep working on “Howl” and test it in front of a smaller audience more open to challenging work, which might include people mentioned in the poem or similar enough that they could see themselves as among “the best minds of [his] generation.” Reading “Howl” at the Nourse Auditorium might have landed him in jail or put him back in a mental hospital but reading it at the 6 Gallery had the potential to kickstart a literary revolution. I believe Ginsberg recognized this, made a smart choice, and used the Arts Festival as a warm-up for the reading of a lifetime.
Of course, it is impossible to prove this all one way or another. I have presented the facts as best I can and drawn conclusions using probability but it is possible I am wrong and perhaps the reader will reach a different conclusion.
Further Reading
If you enjoyed this essay, you may appreciate this long investigation into when Ginsberg wrote the first part of “Howl.” You may also appreciate this shorter article about mistakes people make when discussing the 6 Gallery reading.
Footnotes
[1] As best I can tell, they have been cited in a book about Richard Brautigan, a book about café culture, and a book about West Coast painters of the mid-twentieth century.
[2] The name alternated between “Arts Festival” and “Art Festival” from one year to the next. In 1955, “Art Festival” was in use but “Arts” was more common across a longer period of time and so I will use that term here for the sake of consistency. Also, given that it was arranged by the “Arts Commission,” it seems more logical, and as we have seen in this book, there was a strong belief in “arts” over “art” in San Francisco from the mid-forties onwards.
[3] We can see here that although “Arts Commission” was the official term, “Art” was used even by its president, compounding the confusion over names. It may be of some minor interest that one of the members of the Arts Commission tasked with arranging this event was Antonio Sotomayor, who was the first artist whose work was ever shown at 3119 Fillmore. That was in 1952, during its very brief period as headquarters of the San Francisco Community Theater.
[4] Marko’s real name was Marvin Schmoker. He went by Zekial Marko or just the mononym Marko for professional purposes.
[5] This was when the quoted essay was published in Rolling Renaissance: San Francisco Underground Art in Celebration. I would have assumed the essay was written a little before that date, but in the 1980s Goodwin remembered it being thirteen years after the 6 Gallery reading.
[6] This “(sic)” is Goodwin’s, not mine. To avoid confusing matters, I have not used “[sic]” in this excerpt. All mistakes here are as Goodwin typed them.
[7] I would like to express my gratitude to Bill Morgan for helping me to locate this important document.
[8] Yes, this is “out-group” and not “our group.” Almost every other account says “our group” because they have—whether they admit it or not—copied this text from Rebecca Solnit’s 1990 work, Secret Exhibition. She made a tiny error in transcription (an understandable one but one unlikely to be made twice) that people have repeated for thirty-five years rather than find the original letter.
Endnotes
[i] https://archive.org/details/sanfranciscoarts1951sanf/page/n3/mode/2up
[ii] https://www.cityarts.net/theater/
[iii] Minutes of Art Commission of the City and County of San Francisco 1955, p.3249
[iv] SF Examiner, September 18, 1955, p.6
[v] SF Examiner, September 18, 1955, p.6
[vi] Minutes of Art Commission of the City and County of San Francisco 1955, p.3261
[vii] SF Examiner, September 22, 1955, p.32
[viii] Goodwin to Ryan, 9-21-1955
[ix] Gerd Stern Oral History
[x] Goodwin, “Dress Rehearsal” MSS version, not published version
[xi] Goodwin to Ryan, 9-21-1955
[xii] Goodwin to Ryan, 9-21-1955
[xiii] Goodwin, “Dress Rehearsal”
[xiv] Ginsberg to LaVigne, 9-26-1955
[xv] Typewriter is Holy
[xvi] Howl on Trial, p.35
[xvii] Goodwin to Ryan, 9-21-1955
[xviii] Goodwin to Ryan, 10-8-1955
[xix] Goodwin to Ryan, 10-8-1955