The Six Gallery Reading

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Allen Ginsberg first read Howl aloud in public on October 7, 1955, at the Six Gallery, a converted auto repair shop in San Francisco, at a reading the painter Wally Hedrick first proposed and organized, with poet Kenneth Rexroth serving as master of ceremonies, featuring five other readers including Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen. Jack Kerouac was in the audience and, by most accounts, helped stir the crowd's response by shouting Go, go and passing around jugs of wine as Ginsberg read. The reading is widely treated as the public debut of the Beat movement as a literary scene, and City Lights publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti, also in attendance, wired Ginsberg soon after offering to publish the poem.