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[JF Goodwin 1219 Kearney ST San Francisco] 1219 Kearny sf 2/28/75 Dear Mr. Green, Whenever anyone dredges up that "Rolling Renaissance" article of mine I start squirming a little. At the time, I didn't quite realize it would be printed forthwith, or I'd have been a bit more responsible in checking up on some of my recollections. Also, Someone edited the article, cutting a word here, a paragraph there. This of course was necessary; [[crossed out]] the [[/crossed out]] but the published version has a curiously different tone from what I really said. I was mainly pointing out the volcanic power that one word can have. Whoever made up the word "beatnik" really unleashed something. It was like an Anatole France plot come to life. And embedded in this semantic discussion was my little tall story about "Howl". It is a true, eye-witness account, but my purpose was humorous rather than contentious. But you do seem to be serious about it. Last night I dug down to the bottom of a drawer full of Neighborhood poetry and exhumed this program of the 1955 S.F. Art Festival. And surely enough, here it is, that first Howl performance, on Friday, Sept. 16. As you see, the Pizza Pusher was the night before that, after another group of poets. Wernham, though not listed, did read his dope poems on the 16th. It was quite a large crowd, in the Nourse Auditorium. (Marko dropped in here a few months ago, and I think he said that the public address system conked out in the middle of "Howl," so that Ginsberg had to start yelling. Act of God?) I was sitting with Jim Harmon, an anarchist poet, and we had been collapsing with merriment over Nugent's wholesome baseball poems in the middle of all this. There was quite a group of anarchist artists at the time, many of whom had been in C.O. camps during WW2/. One of these was Ronnie Bladen, who could turn a neat remark on occasion. Once M. McClure, who had a charming way of going along with the outrageous, read a poem that consisted of nothing but the word "light", repeated over and over for about fifteen minutes. In the next intermission outside, he asked Bladen, "Did you like my poem?" "Oh yes," Bladen replied. "Parts of it." As for the reading at the 6 Gallery, it was on Oct. 5th. That year a lot of the North Beach people were at Mexico City College on the G.I. Bill, writing, painting murals, running off with each other's wives, having a grand time. I used to attend poetry readings to gather humorous material for letters, and John Ryan has a letter I wrote describing the October 5th performance. The other two poets were Lamantia (who lives across the street) rather elegantly reading John Hoffman. "The only regret I have", improvised Rexroth,"is that I am too old to have been included in Allen's poem." And yes, I think there were posters or handbills saying "6 Poets At The 6". Freud says that one sure earmark of the mature human is that he keeps repeating the same mistake over and over. By 1967 the public was freshly aroused about the "hippies" in the Haight-Ashbury. Barney Gugel and Tom Albright, chatting at Deno's bar, cooked up this (over)
Transcription Notes:
Not sure that the formatting of noting underlined/crossed out words is correct in transcription.
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Reopened for Editing 2023-07-31 13:13:02
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Reopened for Editing 2023-07-31 12:22:41
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Reopened for Editing 2023-07-31 16:14:43
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Reopened for Editing 2023-07-31 17:16:52
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Reopened for Editing 2023-08-01 10:54:03