This weekend marks the 60th anniversary of Allen Ginsberg, the famous poet and Beat icon, coming to Wichita. Back in the 1950s, Kansas and Wichita had a number of writers and artists who’d gone to San Francisco to be part of the Beat scene. When Ginsberg got a travel grant, he made a visit to Wichita as part of his tour to the Midwest.
In February of 1966, Ginsberg arrived in Wichita; some local authorities were worried about possible obscenities. Ginsberg was a big celebrity, and people crowded into his readings at venues, including the the Magic Theater/Vortex Art Gallery located next to the Eaton Hotel downtown at Douglas & St. Francis.
On the tour, Ginsberg made stops at KU and the University of Nebraska before coming back to Wichita; he was struck by the calm of the Great Plains in contrast to the horrors he’d heard about in Vietnam. As a result, he wrote a poem called the “Wichita Vortex Sutra”…