In 1953 Lawrence Ferlinghetti founded the first paperback bookstore in the United States. In over five decades City Lights, the bookstore and publisher, has become a Mecca for millions. Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind (ND, 1958) is a number one best-selling volume of poetry by any living American poet. Now, New Directions is proud to publish his manifesto in a paperback edition.
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From Publishers Weekly
Short and inspiring, but rarely surprising, this collection of remarks, aphorisms and exhortations about the nature and purpose of poetry began in the late 1950s, when Ferlinghetti was just coming into his own as a Beat poet and publisher of City Lights Books. After 50 years of revisions and additions, his claims may not strike experienced readers as fresh—and some may even seem clichéd: The state of the world, his first page declares, calls out for poetry to save it. On the other hand, Ferlinghetti's very large body of fans (he is one of the bestselling 20th-century American poets) should find reason and justice in these eternal verities, couched in up-to-date lingo: Poems are e-mails from the unknown beyond cyberspace, for example. Beginning teachers of creative writing should also find Ferlinghetti's instructions of use: Read between the lines of human discourse. Two groups of aphorisms make up most of the volume, to which Ferlinghetti adds a short essay and two 1970s poems. Modern Poetry Is Prose encourages young writers to discover the dark spirit of earth and blood; Populist Manifesto #1 hopes Whitman's wild children, however pressed down by modernity, will soon Awake and sing in the open air. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Lawrence Ferlinghetti was born in Yonkers, New York, in 1919. After receiving an A.B. degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina, an M.A. from Columbia University, and a stint in the Navy during World War II, and after working in the mail room at Time Magazine and living in Paris where he received a Doctorat de l'Universite from the Sorbonne, Ferlinghetti eventually settled in San Francisco, where he and Peter D. Martin founded the first all-paperback bookstore in the country, City Lights Books. Besides being named San Francisco's first poet laureate, he has received The Before Columbus Foundation "Lifetime Achievement Award." Most recently he has also been writing a weekly column, “Poetry as News,” for the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review.
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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.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lawrence of America,
By S. Ihad (USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Poetry as Insurgent Art (Hardcover)
More bon mots from the old bard of San Francisco. To this day Ferlinghetti gets confused for a Beat poet. He is in fact a Bohemian poet and artist who only published the Beats. In this book his words are few but to the point. You want to keep this in your back pocket at all times. Who knows when you're gonna need some emergency wisdom!? He is one of the best poets alive and the title of Lawrence of America is well-earned for a man who single-handedly changed the literary landscape of this country. Thank you Lawrence! May the lights of all the cities of the world shine upon you.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Power of Words,
By
This review is from: Poetry as Insurgent Art (Hardcover)
Ferlinghetti's little book is full of big inspiration. It is a call to take poetry off the page and live the words. Buy extra copies for your friends and loves, for this is essential reading.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Poetic Wisdom,
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This review is from: Poetry as Insurgent Art (Hardcover)
This great little book - small enough to carry in one's back pocket, like a New Testament or the Little Red Book of Chairman Mao - is my new Manifesto. "Poetry deconstructs power. Absolute poetry deconstructs absolutely." Happy deconstructing.
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