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See Also

Beat generation

Brubeck, Dave

Burroughs, William S.

Conformity, culture of

Ferlinghetti, Lawrence

Ginsberg, Allen

Kerouac, Jack

Poetry

Rexroth, Kenneth

Sahl, Mort

The 1950s in America

San Francisco Renaissance

by Leslie Joan Friedman

The Event Flowering of culture, especially poetry, in San Francisco, California

Date 1955-1960

Artists of the San Francisco Renaissance influenced national literature, popular culture, and lifestyles. They offered an alternative to American society’s conformity to establishment values.

A poetry reading at Six Gallery in October of 1955 launched the San Francisco Renaissance. Five poets—Allen Ginsberg , Philip Lamantia , Michael McClure , Gary Snyder , and Philip Whalen —read that night, and despite their differences, their aesthetic and social values typified the San Francisco Renaissance. Kenneth Rexroth, another important figure in the movement, served as the evening’s host.

The reading at Six Gallery demonstrated elements of the literary culture to come. The most significant work read was Ginsberg’s long poem “Howl.” The poem’s opening line, “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,” was emblematic of the writers’ feelings that materialism and conformity had been imposed on American thought and lifestyles and suffocated the best impulses of life and art.

The other poets’ works typified the themes and styles that were to become important to the movement in the following years. These themes included confessional writing, a focus on the unity of nature and humanity, an interest in the religions and literature of China and Japan, and a startling surrealistic and sexual imagery. Jack Kerouac’s emphasis on camaraderie and community came under fire during the group’s internal squabbles, but these values tended to remain ideals for all.

Kerouac, a writer whose book The Town and the City was published in 1950, was in the Six Gallery audience that night. His description of the poetry reading in his book On the Road, published in 1957, arguably gave the gathered artists more of a group identity than any of them or Kerouac himself ever expected or wanted. Often collectively referred to as the Beat poets—a term that has been defined variously as relating to the feeling of being beaten down or disillusioned or as an abbreviation of “beatific” or saintly—none of them accepted that term for their work.

Some of the writers and musicians related to the movement used drugs, while others were homosexual. However, their individual lifestyles did not affect their intentions to create serious art. As Snyder sought enlightenment through Buddhism and nature, others hoped to find it in love, sex, or with chemical assistance. Individual freedom was a value consciously expressed in their choices.

Senior Figures

There were several older figures associated with the group who served as mentors and inspired the participants in the movement. Kenneth Rexroth was born in 1905 and was older than those he introduced at Six Gallery , most of whom were born during the late 1920’s and early 1930’s. His work looked to Asian poets and the natural world for inspiration. He observed life in San Francisco as a source for poetry and an ideal community worth building.

Kenneth Patchen was revered by the younger poets. A debilitating back injury limited his activities. At one point, he wrote a denunciation of being included in any regional or movement identity, a move that cooled some relationships and maintained his outsider persona. Nonetheless, Henry Miller , Lawrence Ferlinghetti , and Ginsberg praised Patchen’s work, which expressed core values of the renaissance: opposition to materialism and war, reverence for all life, and speaking out for the common person.

Ferlinghetti also denied being a Beat or part of a movement, yet he is identified with the San Francisco Renaissance. He opened City Lights Bookstore in 1953, and in 1955, he started publishing. His first book of poetry, Pictures of a Gone World (1955), was the first in a distinguished series of works; his widely read A Coney Island of the Mind was published in 1958. His poetry connected ordinary experience to larger social realities using humor and an anger at the distance between American ideals and the true facts of American politics.

Cultural Context

Ten years after World War II, American society faced new struggles: pressures to conform to narrower lifestyle choices, suspicions fostered by the Joseph McCarthy anticommunist hearings, civil rights struggles, and Cold War fears.

Events in San Francisco challenged established cultural norms and mores. In 1949, the Pacifica (for pacifist) Foundation founded KPFA, an FM radio station that broadcast poetry readings and alternative news reports. In 1954, Ruth Witt-Diamant opened the Poetry Center at San Francisco State College (later a university) to give local and visiting poets a forum for their work.

In the spring of 1957, Ferlinghetti and a City Lights Bookstore employee, Shigeyoshi Murao , were arrested for selling an obscene book, Ginsberg’s Howl, and Other Poems (1956). In October, a municipal judge found that the poem did have redeeming social value and was not obscene. The court decision breathed new life into the poetry movement and the now world-famous Beats.

Jazz’s improvisational quality fit the poets’ interest in living life in the present moment. Patchen read his poetry with noted jazz musicians Charles Mingus and Dave Brubeck . Rexroth and Ferlinghetti frequently read with jazz performers. The mostly white poets took a step against mainstream America by merging their readings with jazz played by black and white musicians.

Enrico Banducci founded the Hungry i (“i” stood for “intellectual”) nightclub in North Beach, San Francisco, the neighborhood of City Lights and an area frequented by poets and jazz musicians. He featured comedians and folk singers who presented alternatives to established modes of entertainment. Comic Mort Sahl satirized political events there throughout the 1950’s, as did other comics with a satirical edge, including Lenny Bruce , Phyllis Diller , and Bill Cosby . The Kingston Trio and Glenn Yarbrough began their folk music careers there.

Styles associated with the Beats were adopted by many. San Francisco columnist Herb Caen invented the word “beatnik” (after the Soviet satellite Sputnik) to describe beret-wearing coffee house denizens playing bongo drums.

The Place

San Francisco’s natural beauty, diverse population, and mild climate attracted and inspired artists. The city’s reputation for tolerance of eccentrics and alternative lifestyles offered a perfect opportunity to develop a community. Its distance from the publishing establishment in New York and the government in Washington, D.C., gave it a sense of freedom and encouraged experimentation. That distance also helped the New York publishing world marginalize the poets as regional curiosities at best and as depraved subversives at worst. Life magazine was especially harsh in its reception of the Beats.

Impact

The San Francisco Renaissance was a force in opposition to dominant artistic and cultural norms. The Beats faded away by 1960, but the work of Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti , Snyder , Patchen , the folk singers, jazz artists, and political satirists continued. Opposition to materialism and identification with nature laid the groundwork for the future ecology movement. The poets voiced the concern that America’s best ideals were being expunged by political witch-hunts . Their poetry reached out to nonpoets in the tradition of nineteenth century poet Walt Whitman. The renaissance renewed and expanded San Francisco’s role as a center of the arts. The “hippie” movement during the 1960’s was inspired by the antiwar politics and ecstatic poetics of the renaissance, but it did not have the same focus on traditional literary forms.

Further Reading

1 

Davidson, Michael. The San Francisco Renaissance: Poetics and Community at Mid-Century. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989. A literary analysis of many poets that includes the often neglected women writers.

2 

Ferlinghetti, Lawrence, and Nancy Peters. Literary San Francisco. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1980. A complete history of the writers of the San Francisco Renaissance, it focuses on personalities from North Beach and the group’s political activism.

3 

French, Warren. The San Francisco Poetry Renaissance, 1955-1960. Boston: Twayne, 1991. With a useful time line and bibliography, this study sets the poets and their philosophies into a framework of literary and art history.

4 

Meltzer, David, ed. The San Francisco Poets. New York: Ballantine Books, 1971. Informative and entertaining interviews with six leading poets with selections of their poetry, edited by a San Francisco poet.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Friedman, Leslie Joan. "San Francisco Renaissance." The 1950s in America, edited by John C. Super, Salem Press, 2005. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=1950_607.
APA 7th
Friedman, L. J. (2005). San Francisco Renaissance. In J. C. Super (Ed.), The 1950s in America. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Friedman, Leslie Joan. "San Francisco Renaissance." Edited by John C. Super. The 1950s in America. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2005. Accessed December 14, 2025. online.salempress.com.