GINSBERG, Allen; Gregory CORSO. Allen Ginsberg Reads His Poetry. Recorded October 25, 1956 [1/4-inch reel-to-reel tape].

GINSBERG, Allen; Gregory CORSO. Allen Ginsberg Reads His Poetry. Recorded October 25, 1956 [1/4-inch reel-to-reel tape]. Berkeley, CA: Pacific Tape Library. 1956 [but after 1963].

[offered with]

GINSBERG, Allen; Gregory CORSO. 'Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso: Reading from Their Work': Program for a Poetry Reading at The Poetry Center at the Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Association, 555 Chestnut, Sunday October 21, 1956.

a) Original 1/4-inch reel-to-reel audio tape housed in a grey paper-covered lidded box, with Pacifica label affixed to the lower portion and completed in typescript; ownership signature of Brad Wood to lid. Box lightly toned and rubbed. Reel clean and fully playable, professionally tested and transferred (digital copy supplied). The zip code printed on the label indicates that this copy was produced after 1963.

b) Mimeographed programme, A4 leaf printed on one side only, being the first page of a two-page handout (second page missing, supplied in facsimile).

An original Pacifica tape of Allen Ginsberg's first radio broadcast and the earliest known broadcast recording of Howl; offered together with a rare programme for a landmark 1956 reading by Ginsberg and Gregory Corso, introduced by Robert Duncan.

At 10.30 p.m. on 8 December 1956, listeners tuning their radios to KPFA-FM in Berkeley heard a young Allen Ginsberg read from Howl and Other Poems, published only weeks earlier by Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights Books. Recorded in the station's studios on 25 October, the programme included three poems from the volume together with the long title poem itself. It was Ginsberg's first appearance on radio and the first broadcast of Howl to reach a public audience. Although a recording of portions of a February 1956 reading at Reed College survives, the KPFA programme remains the earliest known radio broadcast of the poem and one of the foundational audio documents of Beat literature.

The significance of the broadcast extends beyond literary history. Bay Area journalist and cultural critic David Lamble later described Ginsberg's appearance on KPFA as ‘the first truly gay broadcast’, a landmark in the public articulation of queer identity through American radio. Yet the occasion was equally important for what it revealed about Pacifica itself. Founded by Lewis Hill, Pacifica sought to transform radio into a medium for cultural exchange, political engagement, and the spoken arts. Poetry occupied a central place in this vision, and KPFA quickly became an indispensable platform for the writers of the San Francisco Renaissance and Beat Generation. Kenneth Rexroth, Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, Helen Adam, Gary Snyder, Diane di Prima, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Ginsberg himself all recognised the possibilities of the relatively new medium.

The recording captures Ginsberg at a particularly revealing moment in the development of his public voice. Introducing Howl, he reflects that the poem ‘should be read, the way it should be read, is with people or in front of people’, before proposing ‘to read it quietly and give it a silent chance’. As Lisa Hollenbach has observed, the performance gradually builds from a hesitant and intimate delivery into the incantatory rhythms associated with Ginsberg's later readings. The isolation of the studio setting, removed from the energy of the public poetry reading, lends the recording an unusual emotional intensity, making it one of the most revealing documents of the poet's early career.

Only months later, Howl and Other Poems would become the focus of the celebrated obscenity prosecution against Ferlinghetti and City Lights. KPFA followed the controversy closely and, in June 1957, rebroadcast portions of Ginsberg's recording as part of a programme devoted to the case. At the subsequent trial, the defence cited the station's earlier broadcast as evidence that the poem had already been publicly received as a work of literary and social value.

The accompanying programme preserves an equally important moment in Beat history. Written by Robert Duncan, then assistant director of the Poetry Center, it advertises a reading by Ginsberg and Gregory Corso held on 21 October 1956, four days before the KPFA recording. Duncan enthusiastically describes the event as ‘a historic event’. Despite a large and expectant crowd of more than five hundred, Ginsberg did not read from Howl, as advertised, much to their disappointment.

Together, the programme and tape document a remarkable week in Beat history, preserving both a contemporary record of the public excitement surrounding Ginsberg and Corso and the earliest broadcast presentation of the poem that would transform American poetry.

See Hollenbach, ‘Broadcasting “Howl”’, Modernism/modernity (2018).

SKU: 2124406