Paul McDonald's drop-in spiel about the poetry reading that Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and Michael McClure gave in San Francisco on October 17, 1955 is a must-hear for many public radio-philes who don't rank poems or National Poetry Month as top dog. McDonald's description of the wild, whirling events surrounding the emergence of Beat Poetry -- plus his summary about how the events on that famous October night developed from earlier sources and influenced the zeitgeist of the future -- is a gem of compression. Still, in 2007 I long for more. It's as if we linger in a time warp more than 50 years old, neglecting such brilliant current practitioners of experimental poetry as Michael Palmer, Paul Violi, and Erica Bernheim. It would be great to hear more about these and other edgy new poets on public radio.