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PHOTO GALLERY
 Recognized
as one of the most influential and important poets of the Beat
movement, Lawrence Ferlinghetti was born in Yonkers, New York
on March 24, 1919. Shortly after his birth, Ferlinghetti's mother
was committed to an asylum for the insane and the young boy was
sent to France to be raised by a female relative.
It wasn't until his return to America, at the age of five, that
this future poet learned to speak English. Ferlinghetti also
began writing poetry during his years at boarding school in the
late 1920's.
During his adolescence, Lawrence not only became an Eagle Scout,
an extremely prestigious feat in itself, but joined a street
gang known as the "Parkway Road Pirates". It was his
association with the latter group that led to an arrest for petty
theft. Soon after, a woman by the name of Sally Bisland handed
the troubled young man a copy of Baudelair poems and inspired
within him a love for literature.
After his graduation from high school, Ferlinghetti attended
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he enjoyed
works by Hemingway, Faulkner, Dos Passos and Wolfe. He even began
writing a novel inspired by Look Homeword, Angel.
Many of his early years were spent living the life of the "Beat".
On one occassion, Ferlinghetti and a couple of friends hitchhiked
and hopped freight trains to Mexico while reading many of the
popular poets of the period.
Ferlinghetti then joined the Navy where he became a Lieutenant
Commander. Six weeks after the dropping of the atomic bomb, Ferlinghetti
was dischared and spent some time in Portland. The G.I. Bill,
along with his interest in writers, had him furthering his studies
at the Sorbonne in Paris.
 In 1952, Ferlinghetti became acquainted
with Kenneth Rexroth. Rexroth
had already established himself as a notable West Coast writer,
artist and political activist. After meeting Peter Martin, the
publisher of City Lights magazine, the two planned to open a
bookshop by the same name.
The City Lights bookstore of San Francisco soon became a mecca
for writers and artists, many of them well established in the
field of contemporary literaure. The movement was catapulted
by readings from writers such as Michael
McClure, Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder and became known as the "Beat"
period.
Perhaps one of the most volatile and creative times in post-modern
literature, the Beat sub-culture today is looked back upon as
a very glorious period. Ferlinghetti remains one of the most
notable writers from those times and his writings are still widely
read and appreciated today.
Constantly Risking Absurdity ( Top of
Page )
Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of the day
performing entrachats
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
and all without mistaking
any thing
for what it may not be
For he's the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap
And he
a little charleychaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence
Wild Dreams of a New Beginning ( Top of Page )
There's a breathless hush on
the freeway tonight
Beyond the ledges of concrete
restaurants fall into dreams
with candlelight couples
Lost Alexandria still burns
in a billion lightbulbs
Lives cross lives
idling at stoplights
Beyond the cloverleaf turnoffs
'Souls eat souls in the general emptiness'
A piano concerto comes out a kitchen window
A yogi speaks at Ojai
'It's all taking pace in one mind'
On the lawn among the trees
lovers are listening
for the master to tell them they are one
with the universe
Eyes smell flowers and become them
There's a deathless hush
on the freeway tonight
as a Pacific tidal wave a mile high
sweeps in
Los Angeles breathes its last gas
and sinks into the sea like the Titanic all lights lit
Nine minutes later Willa Cather's Nebraska
sinks with it
The sea comes over in Utah
Mormon tabernacles washed away like barnacles
Coyotes are confounded & swim nowhere
An orchestra onstage in Omaha
keeps on playing Handel's Water Music
Horns fill with water
ans bass players float away on their instruments
clutching them like lovers horizontal
Chicago's Loop becomes a rollercoaster
Skyscrapers filled like water glasses
Great Lakes mixed with Buddhist brine
Great Books watered down in Evanston
Milwaukee beer topped with sea foam
Beau Fleuve of Buffalo suddenly become salt
Manhatten Island swept clean in sixteen seconds
buried masts of Amsterdam arise
as the great wave sweeps on Eastward
to wash away over-age Camembert Europe
manhatta steaming in sea-vines
the washed land awakes again to wilderness
the only sound a vast thrumming of crickets
a cry of seabirds high over
in empty eternity
as the Hudson retakes its thickets
and Indians reclaim their canoes
Seascape With Sun and Eagle ( Top of
Page )
Freer
than most birds
an eagle flies up
over San Francisco
freer than most places
soars high up
floats and glides high up
in the still
open spaces
flown from the mountains
floated down
far over ocean
where the sunset has begun
a mirror of itself
He sails high over
turning and turning
where seaplanes might turn
where warplanes might burn
He wheels about burning
in the red sun
climbs and glides
and doubles back upon himself
now over ocean
now over land
high over pinwheels suck in sand
where a rollercoaster used to stand
soaring eagle setting sun
All that is left of our wilderness
A Vast Confusion ( Top of Page )
Long long I lay in the sands
Sounds of trains in the surf
in subways of the sea
And an even greater undersound
of a vast confusion in the universe
a rumbling and a roaring
as of some enormous creature turning
under sea and earth
a billion sotto voices murmuring
a vast muttering
a swelling stuttering
in ocean's speakers
world's voice-box heard with ear to sand
a shocked echoing
a shocking shouting
of all life's voices lost in night
And the tape of it
someow running backwards now
through the Moog Synthesizer of time
Chaos unscrambled
back to the first
harmonies
And the first light |