A Far Rockaway of the Heart [Hardcover]

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1997

"A Far Rockaway of the Heart" is Ferlinghetti's sequel to "A Coney Island of the Mind," written forty years afterwards in what the author has called "a poetry seizure" that lasted more than a year. A sequence of one hundred and one poems with recurrent themes, it includes various sections on love, art, music, history, and literature, as well as confrontations with major figures in the avant-garde before the arrival of the Beat generation. This paperbound edition now includes eighteen new poems from Ferlinghetti's "Pictures of the Gone World" which he publishes under his City Lights imprint. A self-styled "stand-up tragedian," Ferlinghetti has been called "the foremost chronicler of our times." If "A Coney Island of the Mind" was a generations vibrant eye-opener, "A Far Rockaway of the Heart" is a wake-up call for a new age.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

By beginning the first poem with the line, "Everything changes and nothing changes," Ferlinghetti invites the reader to visit old haunts, seek new stomping grounds, and hang out in his poetic world long enough to notice all that is altered and all that has stayed the same. A Far Rockaway of the Heart is a sequel to Ferlinghetti's 1950s Beat generation book, A Coney Island of the Mind, and reveals how he has weighted the scales this time more to heart-side than mind, offering a far more personalized narrative of familial, poetical, and social history. Although Ferlinghetti attempts to make political commentary and interject real-life lingo, it often appears, not witty or insightful, but obvious, not hip or in tune, but cliche, past tense. What seems startling is the subtle ways in which Ferlinghetti, too, has been influenced by the Confessionalists whose movement superseded Beat and struck a chord with Americans' fascination with self. Far Rockaway pays homage to the past while trying to record all the sameness and change of the century. For libraries with strong poetry collections. Janet St. John

Review

"Love's not time's fool," said Shakespeare in a sonnet, but in Ferlinghetti's colorful portrait of the world, love and time magically fool each other until the end--just one more reason why the Beat should go on. -- Peter Kyper, "Rain Taxi"

And Are We Not Then In The Real Paradiso Not In Dante's
And Every Poem And Every Picture
And Love Be Written On Running Water
And Pablo Neruda %that Chilean Omnivore Of Poetry
And Samuel Beckett's House Of Cards
At Ellis Island I Saw Her
At Night %a Dying Star
At The Golden Gate
A Blue-bottle Fly %alighted On My Palette
But What Is That Laughter Under The Hill
By Brooklyn Bridge %an Elephant Stands Under The Elevated
By The Statue Of Rodin
The Cat Doing Kundalini
A Cricket Somewhere %winds His Watch
The Dance Of The Mind
Day After Day Returning
Death Comes On %like A Beethoven Concerto
The Defeated Omanticism %of T.s. Eliot
Do Dreams Rescue Your Ego
The Dog Hangs His Snout
Driving A Cardboard Automobile Without A License{
Everything Changes And Nothing Changes
A Flight Through Time
Great River %image Of Time
The Green Street Mortuary Marching Band
He Made The Usual Fool Of Himself
History Is Made %of The Lies Of The Victors'
How Fragile The Flesh
How The Light %lay On The Leaves
I Heard A Woman Making Love Today
I Saw Great Neptune
I Saw One Of Them Sleeping
I Saw Two Lovers
I Would Not Make A Pact With You
I Wring The Neck Of The Swan
In Far-out Poetry %the Heart Bleeds Upon The Page
In Lock Of Love
In That Hinternation %that Stretches Westward From Manhatta
In The Beginning %wasn't The Word
In The Catalog Raisonne %of Hieronymus Bosch
In The Gardens Of The Alhambra
In The Hills Above Firenze %the Fireflies
In The Sala Di Pranzo
The Isles Of Greece
It's A Woman's World
The Italian-american Bimbo From Brooklyn
Kids Blowing Bubbles %in Front Of The Pizzeria
The Leaves Danced To Mozart %above The World's Static
Light Knows Rain %and How To Use It
A Lion Came To My Window
The Long Boats
The Lover Leaves The House Of Her Lover
The Lovers Under The Portico
A Mass In Progress In The Listing Church
The Mind Dances %when The Body Lets It
Narcissus Always Carried %a Small Hand Mirror
A Native-born New Yorker
Never A Madman %yet Never Far
O %heart %involuntary Muscle
O Fragile Poems %flowers Of Night-love
An Obscure Composer %she Was
Oh You Gatherer %of The Fine Ash Of Poetry
On The Stage Set %of The Piazza Della Rotunda
One Great Bird %flew Around Silently
'only Connect!' %cried Columbus
Oope, Pamplona! Cried The Pope
The Party Hoppers %wolfing Down The Wine And Cheese
Passed The Bouncer's Bar Tonight
The Plane Wings Away Toward Heaven
The Population Explodes %and The Sun Wears Shades
The Present Is A Chance Event
Pure White In First Light
Reaching Into The Great Abyss
Rear-guard Galleries %in The Via Margutta
Roma %made Of Flesh And Stone
Rome %rain %on The Tiber
Sewing Two Birds Together
Shadows Of Seabirds %skim The Waves
She Came In Out Of The Night
She Didn't Believe %in Ecstasy
So Much Depends Upon %the Very Yellow Taxicab
So Rent A Museum %and See Yourself In Mirrors
So Show Your Son A Sunset
So That %the God Whom Humans Had Decided
Somewhere On The Coast Of Greece
The Spanish Ants %in Their Trance-dance
Suddenly
Summer Passed Me By
They Were Shooting In The Plazas
Think Back Through The Long Years
The Tiny Little Ragged Mutt
Tonight At The Great Old Beach Hotel
Took The Seashore Road
The Vast Port Sways With Creaking Cordage
A Very Large Cat Ate A Singing Bird
Walking Through The University Of Bologna
When The Painter Pissarro Lay Dying
When The Senses Awake Before The Mind
Where Is That Little Fish
Whereas Einstein Was Not The James Joyce Of Scientists
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

I love Ferlinghetti for the breathless quality of his work, often writing a whole page of poetry with no punctuation, only the spacing and indentation of lines denoting the breaks. He takes the reader on a joyful, angry trip and all that's required of us is to go with him, whether into exhortations on the pretensions of art or mediations on the nature of poetry. Savor this gem on being a poet: "and now in the night/in the general confligration/the white light still consuming us/small clowns/with our little tapers/held to the flame. -- Kliatt, March 1999

It is evident from this sequel to Coney Island of the Mind (written forty years ago), that the world is ready for another Ferlinghetti burst. Ferlinghetti writes wonderingly of life. He seems to have retained the ability to look at even mundane people and events and find meaning. -- The Midwest Book Review

This collection of 101 numbered-that than titled-poems, written in what Ferlinghetti has termed a "poetry seizure" that lasted over a year, confirms that the author remains sharp, unrepentant, relevant, and fearless. His still-keen powers of observation guide us through the image-haunted century, from the sepia tintypes of his orphaned boyhood to the grainy footage of remote planets bounced back to us by the Hubble telescope. A Far Rockaway of The Heart also includes a nice bonus: 18 new poems from the latest City lights edition of Pictures Of The Gone World. All told, I seriously recommend it for Felinghettiphiles, Beat fans, and anyone seeking millennial closure from one who should know. -- Vice & Versa, October/November 1998

With ingratiating wit, Ferlingetti addresses the legacy of Pound, Eliot, Beckett, and others: his boyhood Latin teacher, busy with a "lovely housemaid," was one who resisted Prufrock's sea-girls "And off and on made faces at/ a copy of The Waste Land/ on a very high shelf." A fine if evanescent canzone shows the poet's serious, Poundian attention to matters of technique. Echoes visual and auricular resound from page to page, as Ferlinghetti at once deflates modernist pretensions and celebrates the achievement of his poetic mentors. Jazz players, chansonniers, painters, and sculptors come and go throughout these self-projecting pages. -- World Literature Today, Winter 1998

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 124 pages
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation; First Edition edition (May 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811213471
• ISBN-13: 978-0811213479
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,160,749 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet and founder of City Lights Books, author of A Coney Island of the Mind and Pictures of the Gone World, among numerous other books, has been drawing from life since his student days in Paris where he frequented the Academie Julien and where he did his first oil painting.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars GREAT!, February 16, 2000

By 

Sierra - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Far Rockaway of the Heart (Hardcover)

A Far Rockaway of the Heart is Ferlinghetti's most recent anthology of poetry, and it's one of his best. With more than one hundred poems, it's also packed full of passion. I think that after many years of searching, Ferlinghetti finally found his true voice. These poems are sometimes funny, sometimes painful, but always beautifully created and full of life.

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Bohemian Poetry, March 10, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: A Far Rockaway of the Heart: Poems (New Directions Paperbook) (Paperback)

This is a great book for exploring the Bohemian poetry movement in the U.S. (namely, San Francisco). Contains the poem, "Autobiography," in which Ferlinghetti misidentifies Mount Rushmore as existing in North Dakota--but as I met him recently at a reading at the U of Minnesota, he was cool about it--knew exactly what I was talking about. . .so maybe he has learned a little since the time he wrote it!