Remembering George Herms (1935-2026)

Belatedly noting the passing of a great luminary of the Beat Generation, George Herms
(1935-2026)

from his 1993-1994 Oral History interview at the Archives of American Art at The Smithsonian (conducted by Paul J Karlstrom):

GH …And people don’t like to think that the Beat Generation was other than a bunch of bongo-playing, nihilist types. And it wasn’t that way at all. There was a great camaraderie that turned its back on the materialistic consumerism, basically, was what it was. Nobody was interested in washer/dryers. They were interested in coming to see a thousand people walk through the streets to go to a poetry reading in North Beach. It’s absolutely incredible.
PJK: A thousand!
GH: Yeah. To a hall that would hold a thousand, and the hall was full.
PJK: Where would they go for these readings?
GH: Oh, Fugazi Hall was one. I can’t remember the one that everybody marched to, but it’s in all of the photographs of Wieners and McClure and Lamantia and David Meltzer and Ginsberg. And hearing people in the audience trying to get Allen to speak up, and he would say, “Listen. It doesn’t matter how loud I read my poems, you’re not going to hear it.” (laughs) Isn’t that something? (Herms mimicks loudly, raucous audience) “Louder, louder, Allen, I can’t hear!” (laughs) But he’s right. I mean, the one that heckles is never going to hear it.

Karistrom’s interview took place around the time of the planning for Lisa Phillips‘ groundbreaking 1995 exhibition at The Whitney Museum Beat Culture and The New America 1950-1965 in which Herms played a seminal (sic) role

Allen and Herms, alongside Nat Hentoff and writer curator Steven Watson are seen here discussing Beat culture in the context of that show on The Charlie Rose show:

and Matt Stromberg‘s on Hyperallergic.  (“Titan of West Coast Assemblage Dies at 90” )
– “He transformed found materials and cast-off debris into poetic representations of impermanence, suffused with pathos and humor.”

2014 saw the publication of the Hamilton Press gathering, “The River Book” 

John Yau interviews George about the book – here: