Michael McClure attended Robert Duncan's poetry workshop at San Francisco State College and through Duncan, met Kenneth Rexroth. He became a regular on the San Francisco poetry scene, and it was McClure who arranged for Ginsberg to speak at the Six Gallery in November 1955. McClure would later gain notoriety for writing the play, The Beard. The play was banned and the actors in the early productions were routinely arrested at the end of each performance. Peyote Poem is one of Michael McClure's first published poems.