Ginsberg visited the store several times, both to read his own poetry and to listen to that of others.

"He was such a fiber in my life--I had taken him for granted," said Solane, pausing to wipe away a tear. "Anyway, old man, I love you."

Several readers Monday night exploded with emotion, recalling memories of the poet himself when he delivered pieces like his revolutionary "Howl!," a tirade of deliberately shocking and sometimes obscene verse.

"He knocked down the walls of the academy," Powers said. "And democratized poetry for all of us."

In keeping with Ginsberg's tradition of encouraging individuals to explore personal emotion in a literary form, participants read from some of their own original works, many of them inspired by Ginsberg.

Part of Ginsberg's charm for contemporary poets may be his revolutionary bent and refusal to conform to accepted standards of poetic form.

Rather than attempting to emulate classic poets or British traditions, Ginsberg and other members of the Beat generation opened up the possibility of free, unconstrained poetic expression, poets and scholars say.

"The Beat generation was a major force in the expedition to free the American voice, the inner American voice," said local poet Bob Buckley. "Everyone's here tonight--the beatniks, the hippies, the yuppies. Everyone recognizes what [Ginsberg's] voice brought about."

Powers said he hopes the youth of today can learn from Ginsberg's ground-breaking example.

"As humans, we get habituated to our condition," Powers said. "We need to challenge it through terms of expression, and tonight is an example that there's a thirst for challenging those perimeters we discover."