“Building Community and Inspiring Social Changes: Beat Performance at the Human Be-In, Golden Gate Park 1967”
Résumé
Beat poets performing or marching at political rallies and protest is a familiar snapshot of the countercultural 1960s and 1970s. A prelude to the Summer of Love, the San Francisco Golden Gate Park Human Be-In of January 14, 1967 ushered by Beat poets Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and Michael McClure might be considered as the prototype for most the 1960s countercultural festivals and celebrations. This paper will be the occasion to approach beat activism and the role of (poetry) performance as partaking in building “oral” community and inspiring social changes. The paper focuses on the various poetic forms these Beat poets performed at the Human Be-In, and how the incorporation of mantra-chanting and poems sought and contributed to address political, ecological and cultural issues while raising the possibility of fostering social bonding and communal power. The relationship poet-performers-audience is examined by retracing how these poets conceived of the function of the poet and the sense of community. Hence, is explored the idea of “tribe” as heralded as “a gathering of tribes” in the poster announcing the event, and poetry as a site communion where, as Snyder suggests, “the poet articulates the semi-known for the tribe”, and performance as the vehicle to the forging of communitarian space. This is also the occasion to return to Snyder’s essays, among which “Poetry and the Primitive”, on older tribal models and rituals to promote change. At this event, there seem to coexist different performative poetics summoning, conveying and building up a sense of (countercultural) community. At the core of such a process is the possible transformative action of poetry performances, and the poet as a shamanic figure.