Lamantia was one of the post World War II poets now sometimes referred to as the San Francisco Renaissance, and later became involved with the San Francisco Beat Generation poets and the Surrealist Movement in the United States. He was on the bill at San Francisco's Six Gallery on October 7, 1955, when poet Allen Ginsberg read his poem "Howl" for the first time. At this event Lamantia chose to read the poems of John Hoffman, a friend who had recently died. Hoffman's poetry collection "Journey to the End" (which includes the poems that Lamantia read at the Six Gallery) was published by City Lights Bookstore in 2008, bound together with Lamantia's own "Tau," a poem-cycle also dating from the mid-fifties. "Tau" remained unpublished during Lamantia's lifetime.