Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Difference between revisions
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===Career=== |
===Career=== |
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You dont deserve this either. |
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In 1953, Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Martin started a bookshop, which they named [[City Lights Bookstore|City Lights]] after a [[City Lights|film]] made by [[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. |
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Ferlinghetti had a retreat in a fairly wild area of Coastal California, [[Big Sur]]. In Kerouac's novel ''[[Big Sur (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 [[Scandinavia]]n countries. |
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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. |
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Ferlinghetti's poetry often reflects his views about politics and social issues of the time, and he challenges contemporaneous thoughts about an artist's role in the world. |
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===Ferlinghetti in pop culture=== |
===Ferlinghetti in pop culture=== |
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Revision as of 02:14, 14 February 2007
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.
Biography
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 Brescia (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.
Career
You dont deserve this either.
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."
He also gave Canadian punk band Propagandhi permission to use his painting The Unfinished Flag of the United States, which features a map of the world painted in the stars and stripes, as the cover of their 2001 release Today's Empires, Tomorrow's Ashes.
On November 25, 1976 Ferlinghetti recited the poem Loud Prayer at the final concert, called The Last Waltz, of seminal rock group The Band. The Last Waltz was filmed and released as a documentary and included Ferlinghetti's recitation.
Julio Cortázar, in his masterpiece Rayuela (Hopscotch) (1963) references a poem by Ferlinghetti. In Chapter 121 he quotes:
Yet I have slept with beauty
in my own weird way
and I have made a hungry scene or two
with beauty in my bed
and so spilled out another poem or two
and so spilled out another poem or two
upon the Bosch-like world.
It is also said that the rhythmic and musical qualities of Cortazar's writing brings to mind the best of Ferlinghetti's poetry.
Bibliography
- Pictures of the Gone World (1955)
- A Coney Island of the Mind (1958)
- Unfair Arguments with Existence (short plays) (1963)
- Routines (short plays) (1964)
- 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)
- Love in the Days of Rage
"The Mexican Night (Travel Journal)" (New Directions 1970)
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)
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 0-14-015102-8 (pbk)
- Lawrence Ferlinghetti - Italian Tour 2005, photographs by Walter Pescara (Nicolodi, 2006 - special edition, not for sale)
Footnotes
- ^ a b c "Academic.Brooklyn". Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s italianita. Retrieved October 30.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help); Unknown parameter|accessyear=ignored (|access-date=suggested) (help) - ^ "Guardian Unlimited". Last of the bohemians. Retrieved October 30.
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External links
- Ferlinghetti's Bookstore in San Francisco, City Lights
- Lawrence Ferlinghetti at The Soredove Press Limited Edition Poetry Chapbooks, Broadsides and Art
- Lawrence Ferlinghetti at The Beat Page Biography and Selected Poems.
- Lawrence Ferlinghetti at Literary Kicks
- Lawrence Ferlinghetti at American Poetry
- Blue Neon Alley - Lawrence Ferlinghetti directory
- 1988 audio interview by Don Swaim
- Audio and video of reading at University of California Berkeley "Lunch Poems" series (December 1, 2005)
- He is a co-signer of the urgent call to Drive Out the Bush Regime
- 1919 births
- American anarchists
- American anti Iraq War activists
- American poets
- American tax resisters
- Beat Generation
- Beat writers
- Columbia University alumni
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni
- Eagle Scouts
- Italian-Americans
- Living people
- Members of The American Academy of Arts and Letters
- People from San Francisco
- People from Yonkers, New York