Starting From San Francisco

"Back in the 1970s when I was living in San Francisco I found myself in the midst of a true literary renaissance -- the breadth and depth of which had never been seen in this country before or since. A small group of us in our twenties resurrected the mimeographed Beat literary magazine Beatitude from the 1950s and 60s, and in the company of the older and more well-known Beat poets were living a life we referred to as 'the university of the streets.' Great poems were being written...great events were being staged, huge audiences were created and cultivated. It was nothing short of a literary explosion and some of us that were there and lived and contributed to this experience knew of its importance and dreamed of its positive reverberations and ramifications for the future. Now, forty-five years later, the story of this renaissance and the generational continuation of the Beat Literary Tradition is coming to light"--preface.