A previously unreleased reading emerges from Max Finstein (1924-1982), one of the original Beat writers who successfully bridged the gap between the Beat Generation and the counterculture revolution of the 1960s by co-founding the legendary New Buffalo commune in New Mexico.

Max Finstein stands as a crucial figure in American experimental poetry, part of the influential "Yugen Crowd" - that legendary affiliation of Beat, Black Mountain, and New York School poets who gathered for readings and discussions at LeRoi Jones's (later Amiri Baraka) apartment in New York during the late 1950s and early 1960s. This circle included luminaries like Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Frank O'Hara, and Joel Oppenheimer, forming one of the most dynamic cross-pollinations in American avant-garde history.

Born in Boston in 1924, Finstein served in World War II before attending Black Mountain College, where he connected with the revolutionary poetic community that would reshape American literature. His friendships with Allen Ginsberg, LeRoi Jones, and Joel Oppenheimer placed him at the center of the Beat movement's most fertile period. His poetry, deeply influenced by the landscape of the American Southwest, drew from both Black Mountain poetics and Beat sensibilities.

In 1967, Finstein made the leap from urban bohemia to rural experimentation, co-founding New Buffalo commune in Arroyo Hondo, New Mexico, with Rick Klein, who purchased the 103-acre site with inheritance money. Named after the buffalo as a symbol of sustenance for its people, New Buffalo became the first and longest-lived commune in northern New Mexico, inspiring the hippie commune scene in Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider. The commune represented Finstein's vision of alternative living - a "back to the land" movement that attracted writers, artists, and dropouts seeking to escape urban alienation.

Finstein left New Buffalo in 1969 to establish a second commune, the Reality Construction Company, continuing his experiments in communal living until his death in a truck accident near Tonopah, Nevada, in 1982.

This rare reading captures Finstein at the intersection of two revolutionary moments in American counterculture - the raw energy of the Beat Generation and the utopian idealism of the commune movement. His voice represents that crucial bridge between the literary underground of the 1950s and the social experimentation of the 1960s, making this archival document essential for understanding the evolution of American avant-garde culture.

For collectors of Beat Generation material and students of 1960s counterculture, this recording offers invaluable insight into one of the period's most fascinating transitions - from the coffee houses of Greenwich Village to the communes of New Mexico.