Ferlinghetti's Schedule of Readings & Events Books by Lawrence Ferlinghetti New Poems: Totalitarian Democracy White Horse Brainwashed Poet Dragon's Teeth Speak Out! History of the Airplane Read a Recent Interview with Lawrence in the San Francisco Reader Lawrence's Inaugural Speech For Poet Laureate of San Francisco 1998 Contact Us Sign up for the free City Lights eNewsletter! Enter your Email here: Search Citylights.com
				A Brief History of Lawrence Ferlinghetti A prominent voice of the wide-open poetry movement that began in the 1950s, Lawrence Ferlinghetti has written poetry, translation, fiction, theater, art criticism, film narration, and essays. Often concerned with politics and social issues, Ferlinghetti’s poetry countered the literary elite's definition of art and the artist's role in the world. Though imbued with the commonplace, his poetry cannot be simply described as polemic or personal protest, for it stands on his craftsmanship, thematics, and grounding in tradition. Ferlinghetti was born in Yonkers in 1919, son of Carlo Ferlinghetti who was from the province of Brescia and Clemence Albertine Mendes-Monsanto. Following his undergraduate years at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he served in the U.S. Navy in World War II as a ship's commander. He received a Master’s degree from Columbia University in 1947 and a Doctorate de l’Université de Paris (Sorbonne) in 1950. From 1951 to 1953, when he 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-paperbound bookshop in the country, and by 1955 he had launched the City Lights publishing house. The bookstore has served for half a century as a meeting place for writers, artists, and intellectuals. City Lights Publishers began with the Pocket Poets Series, through which Ferlinghetti aimed to create an international, dissident ferment. His publication of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl in 1956 led to his arrest on obscenity charges, and the trial that followed drew national attention to the San Francisco Renaissance and Beat movement writers. (He was overwhelmingly supported by prestigious literary and academic figures, and was acquitted.) This landmark First Amendment case established a legal precedent for the publication of controversial work with redeeming social importance. Ferlinghetti’s paintings have been shown at various galleries around the world, from the Butler Museum of American Painting to Il Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. He has been associated with the international Fluxus movement through the Archivio Francesco Conz in Verona. He has toured Italy, giving poetry readings in Roma, Napoli, Bologna, Firenze, Milano, Verona, Brescia, Cagliari, Torino, Venezia, and Sicilia. He won the Premio Taormino in 1973, and since then has been awarded the Premio Camaiore, the Premio Flaiano, the Premio Cavour. among others. He is published in Italy by Oscar Mondadori, City Lights Italia, and Minimum Fax. He was instrumental in arranging extensive poetry tours in Italy produced by City Lights Italia in Firenze. He has translated from the Italian Pier Paolo Pasolin’s Poemi Romani, which is published by City Lights Books. In San Francisco, his work can regularly be seen at the George Krevsky Gallery at 77 Geary Street. Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind continues to be the most popular poetry book in the U.S. It has been translated into nine languages, and there are nearly 1,000,000 copies in print. The author of poetry, plays, fiction, art criticism, and essays, he has a dozen books currently in print in the U.S., and his work has been translated in many countries and in many languages. His most recent books are A Far Rockaway of the Heart (1997), How to Paint Sunlight (2001), and Americus Book I (2004) published by New Directions. He has been the recipient of numerous prizes, including the Los Angeles Times’ Robert Kirsch Award, the BABRA Award for Lifetime Achievement, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Award for Contribution to American Arts and Letters, the American Civil Liberties Union’s Earl Warren Civil Liberties Award. Ferlinghetti was named San Francisco’s Poet Laureate in August 1998, and he used his post as a bully-pulpit from which he articulated the seldom-heard “voice of the people.” In 2003 he was awarded the Robert Frost Memorial Medal, the Author’s Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, and he was elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters. Return to Top

Americus Book I In less than a year, Lawrence Ferlinghetti won a lifetime achievement award from the Author's Guild, received the Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and celebrated the 50th anniversary of his renowned City Lights Bookstore. Now, instead of resting on these many laurels, the elder statesman of American poetry "lights out for the territories" with Book I of his own born-in-the-USA narrative, Americus. Describing his work as "part documentary, part public pillow-talk, part personal epic....a descant, a canto unsung, a banal history, a true fiction, lyric and political...," Ferlinghetti merges "certain universal texts, snatches of song, words or phrases, murmuring of love or hate, from Lotte Lenya to the latest soul singer, sayings and shibboleths from Yogi Berra to the National Anthem and the Gettysburg Address or the Ginsberg Address, that haunt our nocturnal imagination...." This sit-up-and-take-notice work breaks new ground in the grand tradition of Whitman, Williams, Olson and Pound, as Ferlinghetti stalks our literary and political landscapes, past and present, to articulate the unique voice of America and create an autobiography of our collective American consciousness. Hardcover 0-8112-1578-4 $21.95

Life Studies, Life Stories Drawings 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. 0-87286-421-9 $19.95

A Coney Island of the Mind Poems Written during a very brief period in the 1950s, the book now has over a million copies in print, including foreign editions. 0-8112-0041-8 $9.95

European Poems and Transitions: Over all the Obscene Boundaries From France to Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, and finally toward America. 0-8112-1084-7 $8.95

A Far Rockaway of the Heart A sequel to A Coney Island of the Mind, written more than forty years later. 0-8112-1398-6 $11.95

Her "A surreal semiautobiographical blackbook record of a vagabond period in my life, in that mindless, timeless state most romantics pass through, confusing flesh madonnas with spiritual ones." -- LF 0-8112-0042-6 $11.95

How To Paint Sunlight New Poems A collection of recent poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. 0-8112-1521-0 $13.95

Love in the Days of Rage A novel A work of lyricism and commitment set in Paris in the revolutionary days of May, 1968. 1-58567-202-5 $13.95 Call for availability

Pictures of the Gone World Expanded edition with 18 new poems to celebrate the 40th year of this populist classic. 0-87286-303-4 $7.95

Routines First published by New Directions in 1964, this collection of Ferlinghetti's short experimental plays includes two previously unpublished pieces. 0-8112-1478-8 $10.95

San Francisco Poems San Francisco's first Poet Laureate (1999-2000) has collected here all of his poems set in the city he has lived in for over a half a century. 1-9314-0401-1 $9.95

The Secret Meaning of Things Six long poems including "Assassination Raga" -- on the death of the Kennedys. 0-8112-0045-0 $8.95

Starting From San Francisco Poems The poet's early travels in North America, South America, and Europe. Includes some psychedelia. 0-8112-0046-9 $8.95

These Are My Rivers New and Selected Poems 1955-1993 Four decades of poetry and more than fifty pages of new work and play. 0-8112-1273-4 $13.95

Wild Dreams of a New Beginning Written in the 1970s, this volume combines two earlier books: Who Are We Now? and Landscapes of Living & Dying. 0-8112-1075-8 $9.95

What Is Poetry A work-in-progress to which the poet is constantly adding; the completed work will be called Ars(e) Poetica. 0-88739-369-1 $9.95

A Coney Island of the Mind CD A great reading by the poet of the complete text of A Coney Island of the Mind, with jazz noir. $17.95 Call for availability!

Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Live at the Poetry Center CD An amazing collection of live poetry by Ferlinghetti. Includes Are There Not Still Fireflies, Baseball Canto, Oracle at Delphi, Blind Poet, & more. 0-9720751-3-5 $17.00

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