Who is Lawrence Ferlinghetti?

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

poet, publisher, artist and political activist, co-founder of the famous City Lights bookstore in San Francisco (California, USA), a symbol of the city. He passed away on February 22, 2021 at his home, at the age of 101.

“San Francisco's First Poet”

Ferlinghetti was born in 1919 in Yonkers, New York. His father died before he was born and his mother was hospitalized in a mental hospital, leaving him to be raised by his aunt. When he was seven, his aunt, who was working as a governess for a wealthy family in Bronxville, suddenly left, leaving Ferlinghetti in the care of his landlord. After attending college in North Carolina, he became a reporter in 1941 and then joined the United States Navy during World War II.

After pursuing his PhD in Paris, he returned to the United States in 1951 and began a new life in California. “There’s something Mediterranean about San Francisco,” he told the New York Times. “I feel like it has a little bit of Dublin, back when Joyce lived there. You can walk down Sackville Street and see everyone you know within a few steps.”

In 1953, he co-founded the bookshop and publishing company City Lights (his co-founder, Dean Martin, left shortly afterwards), with the mission of democratising literature and making it accessible to everyone. “We were all young and reckless,” he told The Guardian, “and poor.”

At that time, most bookstores across the country closed early and closed on weekends, but City Lights was the opposite. It was open 7 days a week and late into the night, nurturing a community of readers like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (two prominent authors ofBeat Generation- “The Beat Generation” - they were people who grew up in the post-war period of World War II, creating works that promoted the freedom of sexual experimentation, psychedelics, meditation...; against the standard values, moderation and conservatism of society). City Lights initially focused on selling paperbacks - cheap books that were not respected by literary establishments, and also published poetry and eccentric books by members of the Beat Generation such as Kerouac, Ginsberg, Paul Bowles, Gary Snyder and Gregory Corso.

In 1955, Ferlinghetti first heard the poem.HowlAllen Ginsberg's famous work. The very next day, he sent a telegram to Ginsberg that read: “I KNOW YOU AT THE BEGINNING OF A DISTINGUISHED CAREER. BUT WAIT. WHEN WILL I RECEIVE YOUR MANUAL?”HOWL?”. Printed copies of the poem were later shipped to San Francisco for storage, and Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg were arrested in 1957 on obscenity charges.

After submitting the poem to the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU successfully defended the poem in a months-long court battle. The court's decision set an important precedent for reducing censorship, heralded a new freedom for books around the world, and catapulted the pair to international fame.

In 1958, Ferlinghetti published his first anthology,A Coney Island of the Mind, which sold over a million copies. He wrote over 50 volumes of poetry, novels and travelogues. As a publisher, he devoted his career to developing genres of poetry and books that were not popular with the general public – a task that became increasingly difficult in the face of “big” publications, driven by profit.

At City Lights, Ferlinghetti organized anti-war protests. He saw poetry as a powerful social force, not just for intellectuals. “The only way poets can change the world is by raising public awareness,” he said.

Over the following decades, Ferlinghetti became a symbol of San Francisco. In 1978, when the city was “shocked” by the Mayor’s assassination, Ferlinghetti wrote a poem published in the San Francisco Examiner titledAn Elegy to Dispel Gloom, he was personally thanked by the city for helping people maintain peace. In 1994, a street was named after him and four years later, he was honored as “San Francisco’s first poet laureate.”

“Lights of the City”

He continued working at City Lights until the late 2000s, chatting with tourists and fans who came just to see the legend. “He was still there every day, fixing light bulbs and other little things,” said Elaine Katzenberger, the store’s current manager, “and he never said no when someone wanted to talk to him. He would always find something in common to talk to them.”

Although he was mostly bedridden and blind in his later years, he managed to publish his final book,Little Boy, on his 100th birthday. Ferlinghetti refuses to describe it as a memoir, “I resist that description. Because memoir means a very sophisticated style of writing.”

In 2019, San Francisco designated March 24 (his birthday) as “Lawrence Ferlinghetti Day” to mark his centenary, with celebrations lasting a month. In an interview from his bed to mark the occasion, he told The Guardian that he still hoped for a political revolution, although “America is not ready for one”. “It will take a whole new generation that refuses to give in to the glorification of the capitalist system… a generation that is not trapped in theme, me, me".

When asked if he was proud of what he had achieved, Ferlinghetti replied: “I'm not sure, to use the wordprouda bit too arrogantHappywould be more reasonable. And if anyone doesn't knowhappywhat does that mean, they have a problem”.

Lan Oanh