Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghettiis an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. Author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, and film narration, he is best known for A Coney Island of the Mind, a collection of poems that has been translated into nine languages, with sales of more than one million copies...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth24 March 1919
CityBronxville, NY
CountryUnited States of America
I certainly was surprised to be named Poet Laureate of this far-out city on the left side of the world, and I gratefully accept, for as I told the Mayor, "How could I refuse?" I'd rather be Poet Laureate of San Francisco than anywhere because this city has always been a poetic center, a frontier for free poetic life, with perhaps more poets and more poetry readers than any city in the world.
I once started out to walk around the world but ended up in Brooklyn, that Bridge was too much for me.
Poets, come out of your closets, Open your windows, open your doors, You have been holed up too long in your closed worlds... Poetry should transport the public/to higher places/than other wheels can carry it...
The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it.
Freedom of speech is always under attack by Fascist mentality, which exists in all parts of the world, unfortunately.
We have to raise the consciousness; the only way poets can change the world is to raise the consciousness of the general populace.
There won't be any changes until we have another depression like in the 1930s, which we have not approached yet in the present recession.
I don't think our Beat Generation would even be known as that, had it not been for Ginsberg. You might say he put that whole concept together. Without it, we might have been known, but only as individuals. Separate, great writers, scattered across the landscape.
I greet you at the beginning of a great career,
I had a show at George Krevsky Gallery this past spring. That show traveled to Woodstock, New York where it showed for six weeks.
There are hardly any left in New York City. The San Francisco Bay Area is very fortunate to still have a lot of independent bookstores.
These are international criminals, and the spineless Democrats are doing nothing about it.
No, I didn't become disenchanted. I just couldn't paint like them.
And the Blue Angels are coming back to scare the local population. I remember seeing old Vietnamese women ducking under the benches in Washington Square; they thought they were back in the war.