Spicer and Ginsberg's San Francisco

Although only a few poets remain from the generation making up the New American Poets, many of the locations that they visited still stand. At the Bay Area Reporter, Mike Flanagan writes: "Their respective circles spent time in bars and coffee houses in San Francisco - some unexpected and many still here." Let's talk a walk with him and check out some SF bars frequented by Jack Spicer:

Jack Spicer met the poet Robert Duncan in Berkeley in 1946. Lewis Ellingham and Kevin Killian's biography of Spicer, Poet Be Like God, notes that it was such an earth-shaking event that Spicer later called '46 the year of his birth - renouncing his first 21 years of life.

Duncan published his groundbreaking essay, "The Homosexual in Society," two years before their meeting. Together with the poet Robin Blaser these three gay men were key figures in the movement that would be the San Francisco Renaissance. 

Spicer and Duncan both participated in Madeline Gleason's first Festival of Modern Poetry in 1947. It was so successful that by 1951 it moved from a gallery to the San Francisco Museum of Art. Spicer was also one of the founders of the 6 Gallery (3119 Fillmore), where Allen Ginsberg first read "Howl" on Oct. 7, 1955 (a year after Ginsberg moved to San Francisco).

Unlike Duncan or Blaser, Spicer spent a considerable amount of his time in bars. His drinking would ultimately cause his death at age 40 in 1965. Because of this, both his life and occasionally his work reflect the gay bar culture of the '50s and '60s. 

Ellingham and Killian's biography mentions that Spicer spent time at the White Horse by 1950. Spicer's poetry mention gay bars in several places, including in "Imaginary Elegies I," where he says:

"When I praise the sun or any bronze god derived from it/
Don't think I wouldn't rather praise the very tall blonde boy/
Who ate all my potato-chips at the Red Lizard."

The Red Lizard (545 Washington) was the bar in the Old Grotto restaurant. It existed only from 1948 to 1951, and aside from the mention in a Spicer poem is notable because it was owned by Sol Stoumen, who also owned The Black Cat.

Read more at the Bay Area Reporter.