(In Paris, in May of 1968, revolution, and love are very m...)
In Paris, in May of 1968, revolution, and love are very much in the air. The barricades are going up, the students of the Sorbonne are taking to streets alive with the graffiti of revolt, and the Odeon is ablaze with speechmaking. For Annie, a young American painter, and Julian, her Portuguese lover, a banker and anarchist, the events of that Paris spring form the backdrop against which their love affair is played.
(In his first original collection in a decade, a companion...)
In his first original collection in a decade, a companion volume to his most famous book, A Coney Island of the Mind, the septuagenarian treats such themes as love, light, art, history, and the landscape of San Franscisco.
(How to Paint Sunlight, a new collection of poems by Lawre...)
How to Paint Sunlight, a new collection of poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, is graced with a short introduction by the poet in which he says, "All I ever wanted to do was paint light on the walls of life." For more than fifty years Ferlinghetti has been doing just that illuminating both the everyday and the unusual, all the while keeping true to his original dictum of speaking in a way accessible to everyone.
(Close to 100 figurative drawings in black and white, and ...)
Close to 100 figurative drawings in black and white, and in color, mostly nudes in love or strife, some "disastered by life," some with incisive or caustic words integrated in the images. This is a retrospective of Ferlinghetti’s graphic work and play, ranging from his early drawings made in Paris ateliers, to yesterday’s sessions sketching models in his San Francisco studio.
(Lawrence Ferlinghetti's first book since Poetry as Insurg...)
Lawrence Ferlinghetti's first book since Poetry as Insurgent Art, a new call to action and a vivid picture of civilization moving towards its brink. New Directions is proud to announce a riveting and galvanizing new book by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
(A new, shorter collection by America's preeminent living ...)
A new, shorter collection by America's preeminent living poet and social activist, who is just as fiery and provocative as ever at 94 years old. Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Blasts contains blasts, blessings, and curses in the vortex of today, taking its cues from the original little magazine, Blast, published by Wyndham Lewis with Ezra Pound in 1914–15 that helped create the modernist movement in literature and the visual arts. In these fearless new poems, Ferlinghetti, America’s everyman bard, speaks for the poor, the forgotten, the beaten, and the bombed.
I Greet You at the Beginning of a Great Career: The Selected Correspondence of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg, 1955-1997
(In 1969, Allen Ginsberg wrote to his friend, fellow poet,...)
In 1969, Allen Ginsberg wrote to his friend, fellow poet, and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti, "Alas, telephone destroys letters!" Fortunately, however, by then the two had already exchanged a treasure trove of personal correspondence, and more than any other documents, their lettersintimate, opinionated, and action-packedreveal the true nature of their lifelong friendship and creative relationship. Collected here for the first time, they offer an intimate view into the range of artistic vision and complementary sensibilities that fueled the genius of their literary collaborations.
(In this unapologetically unclassifiable work Lawrence Fer...)
In this unapologetically unclassifiable work Lawrence Ferlinghetti lets loose an exhilarating rush of language to craft what might be termed a closing statement about his highly significant and productive 99 years on this planet.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is an American poet, publisher, and painter. He was one of the founders of the Beat movement in San Francisco in the mid-1950s. His City Lights bookshop was an early gathering place of the Beats, and the first to print the Beats’ books of poetry.
Background
Lawrence Ferlinghetti was born Lawrence Monsanto Ferling on March 24, 1919, in Yonkers, New York, United States. He is the son of Charles Ferling, an immigrant from Brescia, Italy, and Clemence Mendes-Monsanto. His father had shortened the family name upon arrival in America. Ferlinghetti discovered the lengthier name and took it as his own when he was an adult. Ferlinghetti’s father died shortly before Lawrence was born, his mother was placed in a mental hospital, and a female relative took him to France, where he spent most of his childhood. Later they lived on a Long Island, New York, estate on which she was employed as a governess.
Education
Ferlinghetti’s formal education included the elite Riverdale Country Day School, Mount Hermon, a preparatory academy in Massachusetts, and the University of North Carolina. Upon graduating, he joined the United States Navy. After his discharge Ferlinghetti took advantage of the G.I. Bill to continue his education. He received his master’s degree from Columbia University in 1948, and completed his doctoral degree at the University of Paris in 1951.
From 1951 to 1953, after Lawrence settled in San Francisco, he taught French in an adult education program, painted, and wrote art criticism. In 1953, with Peter D. Martin, he founded City Lights Bookstore, the first all-paperback bookshop in the country. For over sixty years the bookstore has served as a “literary meeting place” for writers, readers, artists, and intellectuals to explore books and ideas.
In 1955, Ferlinghetti launched City Lights Publishers with the Pocket Poets Series, extending his concept of a cultural meeting place to a larger arena. His aim was to present fresh and accessible poetry from around the world in order to create “an international, dissident ferment.” The series began in 1955 with his own Pictures of the Gone World; translations by Kenneth Rexroth and poetry by Kenneth Patchen, Marie Ponsot, Allen Ginsberg, and Denise Levertov were soon added to the list.
Copies of Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems were seized by authorities in 1956 and Ferlinghetti was arrested and charged with selling obscene material. He defended Howl in court, a case that drew national attention to the San Francisco Renaissance and Beat Generation writers, many of whom he later published. With a fine defense by the ACLU and the support of prestigious literary and academic figures, he was acquitted. This landmark First Amendment case established a legal precedent for the publication of controversial work with redeeming social importance.
In the 1960s, Ferlinghetti plunged into a life of frequent travel - giving poetry readings, taking part in festivals, happenings, and literary/political conferences in Chile, Cuba, Germany, the USSR, Holland, Fiji, Australia, Nicaragua, Spain, Greece, and the Czech Republic - as well as in Mexico, Italy, and France, where he spent substantial periods of time. A resolute progressive, he spoke out on such crucial political issues as the Cuban revolution, the nuclear arms race, farm-worker organizing, the Vietnam War, the Sandanista and Zapatista struggles, and the wars in the Middle East.
Ferlinghetti’s paintings have been shown at a number of exhibitions and galleries in the United States and abroad. In the 1990s he was associated with the international Fluxus movement through the Archivio Francesco Conz in Verona. His work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, including a 2010 retrospective at the Museo di Roma in Trastevere, Italy, and a group exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2016. His works are in the collections of the Smithsonian Museum of American Arts and the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, and most recently exhibited at a one-man show at San Francisco’s Rena Bransten Gallery in July 2016.
Ferlinghetti has over a dozen books currently in print, and his work has been translated into many languages. Among his poetry books are Coney Island of the Mind (1958), These Are My Rivers: New & Selected Poems, 1955-1993 (1993), A Far Rockaway of the Heart (1997), How to Paint Sunlight (2001), Americus Book I(2004), Poetry as Insurgent Art (2007), Time of Useful Consciousness (2012), and Blasts Cries Laughter (2014), all published by New Directions. His two novels are Her (1960) and Love in the Days of Rage (2001). City Lights issued an anthology of San Francisco poems in 2001. He is the translator of Paroles by Jacques Prévert from French and Roman Poems by Pier Paolo Passolini from Italian. In 2015 Liveright Publishing, a division of W.W. Norton, published his Writing Across the Landscape: Travel Journals (1960-2010). In 2017, New Directions published an anthology of his work titled Ferlinghetti’s Greatest Poems, and his latest book is a novel, titled Little Boy (2019).
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is a prolific poet. He is best known for his first collection of poems, A Coney Island of the Mind, which has been translated into nine languages, and continues to be one of the most popular poetry books in the United States, with over 1,000,000 copies in print.
Lawrence was named San Francisco’s Poet Laureate in August 1998. In 2003, he was was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2005 the National Book Foundation gave him the inaugural Literarian Award for outstanding service to the American literary community.
Ferlinghetti turned 100 in March 2019, leading the city of San Francisco to proclaim his birthday, March 24, "Lawrence Ferlinghetti Day".
Lawrence has been long identified as a philosophical anarchist, regularly associated with other anarchists in North Beach, and he sold Italian anarchist newspapers at the City Lights Bookstore. A critic of United States foreign policy, he has taken a stand against totalitarianism and war.
Views
Quotations:
"If you would be a poet, create works capable of answering the challenge of apocalyptic times, even if this meaning sounds apocalyptic."
Membership
Ferlinghetti is a member of the Honour Committee of the Italian artistic literary movement IMMAGINE&POESIA.
Connections
Ferlinghetti's wife, Selden Kirby-Smith, is a granddaughter of Edmund Kirby-Smith. He met her in 1946 aboard a ship en route to France. They both were heading to Paris to study at the Sorbonne.
Father:
Charles Ferlinghetti
Mother:
Clemence (Mendes-Monsanto) Ferlinghetti
Spouse:
Selden Kirby-Smith
Daughter:
Julie Ferlinghetti
Son:
Lorenzo Ferlinghetti
References
The People v. Ferlinghetti: The Fight to Publish Allen Ginsberg's Howl
Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s name does not appear in any First Amendment treatise or casebook. And yet when the best-selling poet and proprietor of City Lights Books was indicted under California law for publishing and selling Allen Ginsberg’s poem, Howl, Ferglinghetti buttressed the tradition of dissident expression and ended an era when minds were still closed, candid literature still taboo, and when selling banned books was considered a crime.
2019
Contemporary Authors
A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television, and Other Fields.
