Standing still and walking in New York

by Frank O'Hara

Michael Rumaker centers his memoir in 1957 San Francisco, where many fellow Black Mountain students are migrating since the close of the College. Allen Ginsberg, after the notorious readings of his poem HOWL in 1956, has departed for Tangier, but the young Beats are invading North Beach and a dope scene is blooming. The Place is where the poets and painters hang out and Jack Spicer directs the Blabbermouth nights. This is the summer of the famous HOWL trial where Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Shigeyoshi Murao, of City Lights, are prosecuted for selling Allen Ginsberg's book. Meanwhile the police are stepping up their hassling of hippies on upper Grant Avenue and arresting gays on Polk Street. Rumaker positions his in-depth, eloquent portrait of Robert Duncan against this turbulent city background, and contrasts Robert's open gay life as a poet with his own painful covert sexuality.