Event will celebrate the Beat movement, 70th anniversary of publication of Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl.’
by Duane Bonifer
COLUMBIA, KY. (04/01/2026) Part of Lindsey Wilson University’s A.P. White Campus will be transformed into a late-1950s San Francisco arthouse cafe on April 9 as the poetry and literature of the Beat movement will be celebrated, read and absorbed.
The Beat Cafe will be held from 4-7 p.m. CT on Thursday, April 9, in the Cralle Student Union Building. The event — which will include a coffee bar, snacks and mocktails — is open to the public.
Sponsored by the Lindsey Wilson chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the international English honor society, and supported by a university grant, the Beat Cafe is part of English faculty member Kendall Sewell’s “American Literature II” class, which studies the Beat movement.
It’s also a celebration of the 70th anniversary of the publication of Allen Ginsberg’s seminal poem, “Howl.” Ginsberg first performed “Howl” in 1955 at a Six Gallery reading in San Francisco. Controversial when it first appeared, “Howl” is now part of the U.S. literary cannon.
“It’s often seen as the poem that kicks off the Beat movement,” said Sewell ’13.
Just as some readers struggled with “Howl” when it was first published, Sewell said some of his students find it challenging when they first encounter the poem.
“It’s a poem that is in many ways still shocking to students, and that’s because it does things that students don’t think poetry can do,” said Sewell. “It doesn’t always rhyme or move in the kind of structure you expect a poem to move.”
The first 50 people to show up to the Beat Cafe will receive a free copy of a facsimile of the City Lights Books edition of “Howl,” which was first published in 1956 by fellow poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who was co-founder and co-owner of City Lights Books.
“We want to kind of capture the literary scene of the Beat cafe,” said Sewell, noting that the setting will include an open microphone so that people can read poetry, original or pieces by the Beat poets.
“Howl,” which was read to an audience by Ginsberg about a year before it was published, is often seen as the poem that ushered in the Beat movement.
“A lot of people speak of this as a counter-cultural kind of poem because Ginsberg was looking around at what he saw, and he saw a generation that didn’t have a voice,” said Sewell. “He looked around and saw a culture that was in a boom time and had all this progress and wealth, but Ginsberg asked why America was driven by so much materialism as well as by suspicion of our neighbors.”
By being a “voice from the outside looking in,” Sewell said that Ginsberg and other figures of the Beat movement became an inspiration for other writers and artists of the 1950s and ’60s, such as singer-songwriter Bob Dylan.
“It was transformational for a lot of people and inspirational for other writers and artists,” he said. “You see almost a direct through line from the Beats to the political and social movements that emerged in the 1960s.”
Lindsey Wilson University English faculty member Kendall Sewell ’13 will host Beat Cafe from 4-7 p.m. CT on Thursday, April 9, in the Cralle Student Union Building. The event will celebrate works of the Beat movement, including the 70th anniversary of the publication of Allen Ginsberg’s seminal poem, “Howl.”
Lindsey Wilson University is a vibrant liberal arts university in Columbia, Kentucky. Founded in 1903 and affiliated with The United Methodist Church, the mission of Lindsey Wilson is to serve the educational needs of students by providing a living-learning environment within an atmosphere of active caring and Christian concern where every student, every day, learns and grows and feels like a real human being. Lindsey Wilson offers 30 undergraduate majors, five graduate programs and a doctoral program. The university’s 29 intercollegiate varsity athletic teams have won more than 120 team and individual national championships.
View Online: http://lindseywilson.meritpages.com/news/lindsey-wilson-university-to-host-beat-cafe-on-april-9/58614
(Duane Bonifer – Lindsey Wilson University)