City Lights Bookstore

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City Lights Bookstore, 2010

City Lights is a now legendary independent bookstore / small publisher in San Francisco , California , founded in 1953 by beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and his (short-term) partner Peter D. Martin. The facility became well known because of a lawsuit brought against the publication of Allen Ginsberg's now classic poetry book Howl and Other Poems (City Lights, 1956). In 2001 City Lights was declared a National Historic Landmark due to its significant contribution to major developments in post-war literature ("significant contribution to major developments in post-World War II literature") . The offices are located at 261 Columbus Avenue, on the border between North Beach and Chinatown in San Francisco.

City Lights Bookstore, 2013

Publications

In 1955 Ferlinghetti's Pictures of the Gone World became the first publication by City Lights Publishers and the first book in the Pocket Poets Series . Thirty Spanish Poems of Love and Exile , translated by Kenneth Rexroth , and Poems of Humor & Protest by Kenneth Patchen soon followed . The fourth volume in the series, Allen Ginsberg's Howl and other Poems , brought the publisher and author nationwide attention.

This was followed by other, now often classic, publications, including several volumes of poetry by Ginsberg and True Minds (Marie Ponsot, 1957), Gasoline ( Gregory Corso , 1958) and Revolutionary Letters ( Diane di Prima , 1971).

In 1967 the publishing house was relocated to Grant Avenue. In 1971, Nancy Peters became Ferlinghetti's co-editor.

In addition to works by the Beat Generation , works by international authors such as Georges Bataille , Alejandro Murguía, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Masha Tupitsyn have also been published.

City Lights was associated with socially critical and strongly left-wing topics from the start; accordingly, writings by left theorists such as Noam Chomsky , Michael Parenti , Cindy Sheehan and Ward Churchill were soon published .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ferlinghetti, L & Morgan, B "The Beat Generation in San Francisco: A Literary Tour" City Lights Books, 2003 ISBN 0-87286-417-0
  2. ↑ González, Ray (2003) "Tracing the public surface" , The Bloomsbury Review , Vol. 23, # 2, 2003. Retrieved August 7, 2007.

Web links