City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology [Hardcover]

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2008

"This comprehensive selection from the influential City Lights Pocket Poets Series is a landmark retrospective, celebrating forty years of publishing and cultural history.

From the introduction by Lawrence Ferlinghetti:
“Even though some say that an avant-garde in literature no longer exists, the smaller independent publisher is itself still a true avant-garde, its place still out there, scouting the unknown . . . From the beginning, the aim was to publish across the board, avoiding the provincial and the academic . . . I had in mind rather an international, dissident, insurgent ferment . . .”

Includes poetry by:
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kenneth Rexroth, Kenneth Patchen, Allen Ginsberg, Marie Ponsot, Denise Levertov, Gregory Corso, Jacques Prévert, Robert Duncan, Jerome Rothenberg, Nicanor Parra, Robert Nichols, Anselm Hollo, Malcolm Lowry, Frank O’Hara, Philip Lamantia, Bob Kaufman, Janine Pommy-Vega, Charles Upton, Pablo Picasso, Robert Bly, Diane di Prima, Jack Kerouac, Andrei Voznesensky, Pete Winslow, Harold Norse, Anne Waldman, Jack Hirschman, Stefan Brect, Peter Orlovsky, Antler, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Ernesto Cardenal, Antonio Porta, Adam Cornford, La Loca, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Daisy Zamora, Rosario Murillo, and Alberto Blanco.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Drawing from the 52 volumes published in the Pocket Poets series since 1956, this selection provides a handy sampler of many of the prominent avant-garde and leftist poets of the post-WWII era. Included are poems from Beat staples such as Allen Ginsberg, Kenneth Patchen, Jack Kerouac and Ferlinghetti himself. The anthology also demonstrates, however, the beyond-Beat breadth of the series, with works from William Carlos Williams, Robert Bly, Frank O'Hara, Denise Levertov and others. Arranged chronologically by publication, the collection offers a liberal dose of accomplished post-Beat writers, e.g., Diane di Prima and Anne Waldman, who claim roots in the tradition?although much of the more recent work seems simply derivative. The series' extensive international scope is highlighted in poems culled from German, Russian, Italian, Dutch, Nicaraguan and Spanish poets, including Neruda and Garcia Lorca. All in all, this is a lively, if slightly uneven, retrospective.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Celebrating 40 years of publishing, this anthology contains selections from all 52 volumes of the "Pocket Poets" series. Opening with Ferlinghetti's self-published "Pictures of the Gone World," the book moves on to familiar names (Denise Levertov, Kenneth Patchen, Robert Duncan) as well as lesser-known poets (La Loca, Charles Upton, Adam Cornford). Poets appear without biographical notes and create a dialog united by anticapitalist sentiments that transcend continents and languages. One juxtaposition worthy of note is Ginsberg's "Howl" beside Marie Ponsot's tight, rhyming poems. As Ferlinghetti admits, his aim was "to discover," and this retrospective proves "how right or how important (or how trivial) the editor's choices were." The publisher also welcomed artists established in other disciplines, printing works that other publishers shied away from: William Carlos Williams's hard-to-categorize meditations, poems by Malcolm Lowry and Pier Paolo Pasolini. This collection makes an essential statement and is recommended for all poetry collections.
Rochelle Ratner, formerly Poetry Editor, "Soho Weekly News," New York
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 259 pages
• Publisher: City Lights Publishers; First Edition edition (April 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0872863115
• ISBN-13: 978-0872863118
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #819,109 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nice overview of City Lights poets, but selection problems, August 24, 2005

By 

CK Dexter Haven (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology (Hardcover)

This is a pleasingly slick and blocky hardbacked volume offering a nice sampling of every single one of City Lights' pocket poet editions. But I think the selection could be better.

First, and perhaps predictably, the Beats, and above all Ginsberg, get too much space. Not only does Ginsberg have multiple books in the series, he often gets many poems from each book, while other poets only get one. It's very hard to get a real sense for poets who are new to you--and thus to decide if you want to explore them further--from a single poem. Some of the imbalances are mind-boggling. Corso gets one sole poem, while Kerouac (not a BAD poet, but certainly not a great one) gets eight?!

Second, Ferlinghetti seems undecided on the nature of the volume--is it supposed to represent the best poems in the series, or is it a nostalgic history trip? This is most evident in the selections from Ginsberg--which often appear to have been picked simply because they offer explicit or implicit elegies for each of Ginsberg's famous Beat pals. Many of the Ginsberg selections are pretty disposable--yet his best poems, "America" and "Supermarket in California," are left out, and only part II and the footnote of "Howl" are included.

That said, it's nice to get an easy introduction to City Light's offerings beyond the Beats, that's really the book's best feature. There are many wonderful poems by Kenneth Patchen, a perfect pick of O'Hara, as well as Prevert, Nicanor Parra, Norse, even Picasso, Brecht, and Mayakovsky. It makes me wish they had just trimmed the beats out entirely--or given them their own separate City Lights anthology--so we could get a better taste of the others.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Overrated?, December 14, 2007

By 

Mark Nenadov "arm-chair reader" (Essex, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology (Hardcover)

I think this book is quite a bit overrated. People speak about this book gushing with sappiness. I guess I should make it clear at this point that I'm not really a big fan of this style of poetry. I think beatnik prose can be pretty good and pretty poetic, but I tend to be a little leary about beatnik literature that is explicitly poetry. Make no mistake about it, there is some good material in here, including some of Mr. Ferlinghetti's stuff and some of Kerouac's and Ginsberg's typical stuff. However, overall, I wouldn't say I'm too impressed.

1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beat book, April 11, 2003

By 

Author Brian Wallace (Mind Transmission, Inc.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology (Hardcover)

A wonderful and portable collection of poems about being on the go and experiencing life to its fullest.

Captures the true beat essence in delightful and sundry ways.

A rare joy in the world of poetry.