Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (born Lawrence Ferling[1] on March 24, 1919) is an American poet who is known as the co-owner of the City Lights Bookstore and publishing house, which published early literary works of the Beats, including Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Ferlinghetti was born in Yonkers, New York. His mother was Jewish,[2] the daughter of a French mother and a Sephardic father who taught at the United States Naval Academy and at a New York City college.[1] Ferlinghetti's Lombardy-born father was Italian and had changed his surname from "Ferlinghetti" to "Ferling", although Lawrence changed the family name back when he was 36.[1] He attended the Mount Hermon School and earned the rank of Eagle Scout. He then attended University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and served as an officer in the United States Navy during World War II. After the war, he got a master's degree from Columbia University and a doctorate from the Sorbonne. While studying in Paris, he met Kenneth Rexroth, who later persuaded him to go to San Francisco to experience the growing literary scene there. Between 1951 and 1953 he taught French, wrote literary criticism, and painted.

[edit] Career

In 1953, Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin started a bookshop, which they named City Lights after a film starring Charlie Chaplin. Two years later, after Martin left for New York, Ferlinghetti started the publishing house, specialising in poetry. The most famous publication was Howl, the poem by Allen Ginsberg, which was initially impounded by the authorities, and subject of a groundbreaking legal case.

Ferlinghetti had a retreat in a fairly wild area of Coastal California, Big Sur. In Kerouac's novel Big Sur, Ferlinghetti appears as the character Lorenzo Monsanto. He always enjoyed nature, and he espoused a liberal spirituality imbued with kindness. These aspects of his character inclined him toward friendships with American practitioners of Buddhism, including Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. Politically, he has described himself as an anarchist at heart (a community-oriented, ethical anarchist) who has come to accept that common humanity is not yet ready to live well within anarchism; consequently, he has espoused the sort of social democracy modelled in Scandinavian countries.

Ferlinghetti's best-known collection of poetry is A Coney Island of the Mind, which has been translated into nine languages. In 1998 he was named Poet Laureate of San Francisco. In addition to writing and publishing poetry and running the bookstore, Ferlinghetti continues to paint, and his work has been exhibited in galleries and museums.

Ferlinghetti's poetry often reflects his views about politics and social issues of the time, and he challenges the current thoughts about an artist's role in the world.

[edit] Ferlinghetti in pop culture

The Italian band Timoria dedicated the song Ferlinghetti Blues (from the album El Topo Grand Hotel) to the poet, where Ferlinghetti himself speaks one of his poems. Recordings of Ferlinghetti reading want ads, as featured on radio station KPFA in 1957, were recorded by Henry Jacobs and are featured on the Meat Beat Manifesto album At the Center, mistakenly credited to Kenneth Rexroth. Philadelphia rock musician, Kenn Kweder, also dedicated a track to the poet entitled, "Ferlinghetti."

[edit] Bibliography

  • Pictures of the Gone World (1953)
  • A Coney Island of the Mind (1958)
  • Starting from San Francisco (New Directions 1967)
  • Tyrannus Nix? (New Directions 1969)
  • The Secret Meaning of Things (1970)
  • Landscapes of Living and Dying (1980) ISBN 0-8112-0743-9
  • Over All the Obscene Boundaries (1986)
  • Americus: Part I (2004)
  • Routines (book of short plays)
  • Love in the Days of Rage

"The Mexican Night (Travel Journal)" (New Directions 1970)

[edit] Discography

  • Poetry Readings in the Cellar (with the Cellar Jazz Quintet): Kenneth Rexroth & Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1957) Fantasy Records #7002 LP, (Spoken Word)
  • Ferlinghetti: Tyrannus Nix? / Assassination Raga / Big Sur Sun Sutra / Moscow in the Wilderness (1970) Fantasy Records #7014 LP, (Spoken Word)

[edit] Further reading

  • Constantly Risking Absurdity: The Writings of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, by Michael Skau (Whitson, 1989)
  • Ferlinghetti: A Biography, by Neeli Cherkovski (Doubleday, 1979)
  • Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Poet-at-Large, by Larry R. Smith (Southern Illinois University Press, 1983)
  • Charters, Ann (ed.). The Portable Beat Reader. Penguin Books. New York. 1992. ISBN 0-670-83885-3 (hc); ISBN 0 14 01.5102 8 (pbk)

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ a b c Academic.Brooklyn. Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s italianita. Retrieved on October 30, 2006.
  2. ^ Guardian Unlimited. Last of the bohemians. Retrieved on October 30, 2006.

[edit] External links

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