Are the Beat writers still relevant? In 1965, I attended the Berkeley Poetry Conference, what John Bennett calls “an event creating white light intensity that rivaled any drug high and had more staying power.” This convergence of the Black Mountain, San Francisco Renaissance, Beat, and Northwest Schools gave me the pivotal opportunity to study under such avant-garde poets as Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg, Joanne Kyger, Robert Duncan, and Jack Spicer. In this lecture style class, I will share my direct experience in this influential, historical movement. I will also share how Jack Spicer’s molding of series poetry into chapbooks and Gary Snyder’s counsel to open a bookstore in the hinterlands led to printing and poetry as a spiritual path, giving me a foothold in the poetry world.