The Woodstock Music and Art Fair, held in August 1969 in Bethel, New York, attracted nearly half a million attendees, most of whom wore denim jeans, jackets, and cut-offs. The festival, which became the defining event of the counterculture era, immortalized denim as the unofficial uniform of the peace, love, and music generation. The images of denim-clad festival-goers in the mud of Max Yasgur's farm became iconic symbols of 1960s youth culture.

Woodstock inspired a generation of poets, from the confessionalists to the experimentalists, who chronicled the event's significance in their work. Denim, as the fabric of the festival, appears in the poetry of the period as a symbol of communal experience and anti-materialism, from the verses of the Beat holdovers to the emerging voices of the New York School. The festival also reinforced the association between denim and musical counterculture, a connection that would be explored by poets who wrote about rock music and its cultural impact.