California: USA

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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. Following his undergraduate years at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he saw service in the U.S. Navy in World War II as a ship's commander, took part in the Normandy Invasion and arrived in Nagasaki just weeks after the Bomb was dropped. He received a Master's degree from Columbia University in 1947 and a Doctorate de l'Universite 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 he founded City Lights Bookstore, the first all-paperbound bookshop in the country, with Peter D. Martin. By 1955 had he launched the City Lights publishing house.

The bookstore has served for forty-eight years 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 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 has in recent years become well-known as a painter. His work has been shown at various galleries around the world, from the Butler Museum of American Painting to Il Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. In San Francisco, his work can regularly be seen at the George Krevsky Gallery at 77 Geary Street..

In the 1960s and 1970s, Ferlinghetti's A Coney Island of the Mind was the most popular poetry book in the U.S. Today this modern classic has been translated into nine languages, and there are nearly 1,000,000 copies in print. His most recent books are A Far Rockaway of the Heart (1997) and How to Paint Sunlight (2001), published by New Directions.

He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the L.A. Times Festival Award, the BABRA Award for Lifetime Achievement, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Award for Contribution to American Arts and Letters, and the ACLU'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." His column "Poetry as News" has run regularly in the San Francisco Chronicle.

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