A report on Beat Generation and Michael McClure

Lawrence Ferlinghetti
McClure during the video taping of "Add-Verse", 2004
A section devoted to the beat generation at a bookstore in Stockholm, Sweden

He soon became a key member of the Beat Generation and was immortalized as Pat McLear in Kerouac's Big Sur.

- Michael McClure

Philip Lamantia, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, Ginsberg and Gary Snyder read on October 7, 1955, before 100 people (including Kerouac, up from Mexico City).

- Beat Generation
Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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Placed before the location of Six Gallery on the 50th anniversary of the first full-length public reading of HOWL.

Six Gallery reading

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Important poetry event that took place on Friday, October 7, 1955, at 3119 Fillmore Street in San Francisco.

Important poetry event that took place on Friday, October 7, 1955, at 3119 Fillmore Street in San Francisco.

Placed before the location of Six Gallery on the 50th anniversary of the first full-length public reading of HOWL.

Conceived by Wally Hedrick, this event was the first important public manifestation of the Beat Generation and helped to herald the West Coast literary revolution that continued the San Francisco Renaissance.

At the reading, five talented young poets—Allen Ginsberg, Philip Lamantia, Michael McClure, Gary Snyder, and Philip Whalen—who until then were known mainly within a close company of friends and other writers (such as Lionel Trilling and William Carlos Williams), presented some of their latest works.

Underwater atomic test "Baker", Bikini Atoll, Pacific Ocean, 1946

Counterculture of the 1960s

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Anti-establishment cultural phenomenon that developed throughout much of the Western world between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s.

Anti-establishment cultural phenomenon that developed throughout much of the Western world between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s.

Underwater atomic test "Baker", Bikini Atoll, Pacific Ocean, 1946
Free Speech activist Mario Savio on the steps of Sproul Hall, University of California, Berkeley, 1966
King's "I Have a Dream" speech, given in front of the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington
A family watches television, c. 1958
Anti-war protesters
Carnaby Street, London, 1966
Oz number 31 cover
Three radical icons of the sixties. Encounter between Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre and Ernesto "Che" Guevara in Cuba, in 1960
Yellow Power activist Richard Aoki at a Black Panther Party rally.
Herbert Marcuse, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory, was an influential libertarian socialist thinker on the radical student movements of the era and philosopher of the New Left
Eugene McCarthy, anti-war candidate for the Democratic nomination for the US presidency in 1968
A sign pointing to an old fallout shelter in New York City
The cover of an early Whole Earth Catalog shows the Earth as seen by astronauts traveling back from the Moon
Frisbee and alternative 1960s disc sports icon Ken Westerfield
A small part of the crowd of 400,000, after the rain, Woodstock, United States, August 1969
The Jimi Hendrix Experience performs for the Dutch television show Fenklup in March 1967
The Doors performing for Danish television in 1968
Recording "Give Peace a Chance". Left to right: Rosemary Leary (face not visible), Tommy Smothers (with back to camera), John Lennon, Timothy Leary, Yoko Ono, Judy Marcioni and Paul Williams, June 1, 1969.
The plaque honoring the victims of the August 1970 Sterling Hall bombing, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
A small segment of the "Wall" at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial listing the names of the nearly 60,000 American war dead
Jerry Rubin, University at Buffalo, March 10, 1970

The Pranksters created a direct link between the 1950s Beat Generation and the 1960s psychedelic scene; the bus was driven by Beat icon Neal Cassady, Beat poet Allen Ginsberg was on board for a time, and they dropped in on Cassady's friend, Beat author Jack Kerouac—though Kerouac declined to participate in the Prankster scene.

Michael McClure (born 1932) (poet)

Howl and Other Poems was published in the fall of 1956 as number four in the Pocket Poets Series from City Lights Books.

Howl (poem)

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Poem written by Allen Ginsberg in 1954–1955 and published in his 1956 collection Howl and Other Poems.

Poem written by Allen Ginsberg in 1954–1955 and published in his 1956 collection Howl and Other Poems.

Howl and Other Poems was published in the fall of 1956 as number four in the Pocket Poets Series from City Lights Books.
The administrative board of Yleisradio is getting ready to discuss the broadcast of “Howl” in December 1969.

It came to be associated with the group of writers known as the Beat Generation.

Ginsberg was ultimately responsible for inviting the readers (Gary Snyder, Philip Lamantia, Philip Whalen, Michael McClure and Kenneth Rexroth) and writing the invitation.

First edition

The Dharma Bums

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First edition

The Dharma Bums is a 1958 novel by Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac.

At the event, other authors including Snyder, Kenneth Rexroth, Michael McClure, and Philip Whalen also performed."Anyway I followed the whole gang of howling poets to the reading at Gallery Six that night, which was, among other important things, the night of the birth of the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance. Everyone was there. It was a mad night. And I was the one who got things jumping by going around collecting dimes and quarters from the rather stiff audience standing around in the gallery and coming back with three huge gallon jugs of California Burgundy and getting them all piffed so that by eleven o'clock when Alvah Goldbook was reading his poem 'Wail' drunk with arms outspread everybody was yelling 'Go! Go! Go!' (like a jam session) and old Rheinhold Cacoethes the father of the Frisco poetry scene was wiping his tears in gladness."

Joplin in 1970

Janis Joplin

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American singer and musician.

American singer and musician.

Joplin in 1970
Joplin in 1960 as a graduating senior in high school
Joplin (seated) with Big Brother and the Holding Company, c. 1966–1967 photograph Bob Seidemann
Joplin performs with Tom Jones on This Is Tom Jones in late 1969
Newspaper review of Joplin's 1969 concert at Vets Memorial Auditorium in Columbus, Ohio includes the fact that before it started she walked to the lobby and watched audience members arrive.
Janis Joplin performing at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island in July 1968
Joplin photographed by Jim Marshall in 1969, one year before her death

Joplin cultivated a rebellious manner and styled herself partly after her female blues heroines and partly after the Beat poets.

It was there that she first performed "Mercedes Benz", a song (partially inspired by a Michael McClure poem) that she had composed with fellow musician and friend Bob Neuwirth a very short time earlier.

Promotional photograph of Morrison during The Smothers Brothers Show in December 1968

Jim Morrison

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American singer, poet and songwriter who was the lead vocalist of the rock band the Doors.

American singer, poet and songwriter who was the lead vocalist of the rock band the Doors.

Promotional photograph of Morrison during The Smothers Brothers Show in December 1968
Morrison, age 19, was arrested in Tallahassee for drunken behavior at a football game
A promotional photo of the Doors in late 1966
Morrison performing with the Doors in 1967
Jim Morrison performing in Copenhagen in September 1968
Los Angeles motel room where Morrison lived between 1968 and 1970; currently covered in graffiti from his fans.
A mug shot of Morrison, taken on September 20, 1970
Morrison and his father on the bridge of the USS Bon Homme Richard in January 1964
Jim Morrison Memorial in Germany (Berlin-Baumschulenweg)
Morrison's grave still without a gravestone at Père Lachaise in Paris, June 1978
Morrison's grave at Père Lachaise in Paris, with the marble bust, June 1981
Morrison's grave with headstone and Greek inscription ΚΑΤΑ ΤΟΝ ΔΑΙΜΟΝΑ ΕΑΥΤΟΥ, August 2008
Morrisons’s grave, July 5, 2012
A graffiti of Morrison in Paris, France
Morrison's apartment building in Le Marais, Paris

Beat Generation writers such as Jack Kerouac and libertine writers such as the Marquis de Sade also had a strong influence on Morrison's outlook and manner of expression; Morrison was eager to experience the life described in Kerouac's On the Road.

Morrison befriended Beat poet Michael McClure, who wrote the afterword for Jerry Hopkins' biography of Morrison, No One Here Gets Out Alive.