The Beats: San Francisco

When Allen Ginsberg arrived in San Francisco in August 1954, the

famed San Francisco poetry scene was thriving with such luminaries as Kenneth Rexroth, Robert Duncan, and William Everson. Ginsberg's recitation of Howl in November 1955, at the Six Gallery, galvanized that community and brought the Beat aesthetic to the West Coast: this signaled an era that would become known as the San Francisco Renaissance. A number of the younger poets followed Ginsberg's example and began producing poetry that owed more to the Beat experience of New York than to the older, established poets of San Francisco.

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