Northwest ecolog

by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

Published January 1, 1978

About the author

A prominent voice of the wide-open poetry movement that began in the 1950s, Lawrence Ferlinghetti has written poetry, translation, fiction, theater, art criticism, film narration, and essays. Often concerned with politics and social issues, Ferlinghetti’s poetry countered the literary elite's definition of art and the artist's role in the world. Though imbued with the commonplace, his poetry cannot be simply described as polemic or personal protest, for it stands on his craftsmanship, thematics, and grounding in tradition.

Ferlinghetti was born in Yonkers in 1919, son of Carlo Ferlinghetti who was from the province of Brescia and Clemence Albertine Mendes-Monsanto. Following his undergraduate years at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he served in the U.S. Navy in World War II as a ship's commander. He received a Master’s degree from Columbia University in 1947 and a Doctorate de l’Université de Paris (Sorbonne) in 1950. From 1951 to 1953, when he settled in San Francisco, he taught French in an adult education program, painted, and wrote art criticism. In 1953, with Peter D. Martin (son of Carlo Tresca) he founded City Lights Bookstore, the first all-paperbound bookshop in the country, and by 1955 he had launched the City Lights publishing house.

The bookstore has served for half a century as a meeting place for writers, artists, and intellectuals. City Lights Publishers began with the Pocket Poets Series, through which Ferlinghetti aimed to create an international, dissident ferment. His publication of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl & Other Poems in 1956 led to his arrest on obscenity charges, and the trial that followed drew national attention to the San Francisco Renaissance and Beat movement writers. (He was overwhelmingly supported by prestigious literary and academic figures, and was acquitted.) This landmark First Amendment case established a legal precedent for the publication of controversial work with redeeming social importance.

Ferlinghetti’s paintings have been shown at various galleries around the world, from the Butler Museum of American Painting to Il Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. He has been associated with the international Fluxus movement through the Archivio Francesco Conz in Verona. He has toured Italy, giving poetry readings in Roma, Napoli, Bologna, Firenze, Milano, Verona, Brescia, Cagliari, Torino, Venezia, and Sicilia. He won the Premio Taormino in 1973, and since then has been awarded the Premio Camaiore, the Premio Flaiano, the Premio Cavour. among others. He is published in Italy by Oscar Mondadori, City Lights Italia, and Minimum Fax. He was instrumental in arranging extensive poetry tours in Italy produced by City Lights Italia in Firenze. He has translated from the italian Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Poemi Romani, which is published by City Lights Books. In San Francisco, his work can regularly be seen at the George Krevsky Gallery at 77 Geary Street.

Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind continues to be the most popular poetry book in the U.S. It has been translated into nine languages, and there are nearly 1,000,000 copies in print. The author of poetry, plays, fiction, art criticism, and essays, he has a dozen books currently in print in the U.S., and his work has been translated in many countries and in many languages. His most recent books are A Far Rockaway of the Heart (1997), How to Paint Sunlight (2001), and Americus Book I (2004) published by New Directions.

He has been the recipient of numerous prizes, including the Los Angeles Times’ Robert Kirsch Award, the BABRA Award for Lifetime Achievement, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Award for Contribution to American Arts and Letters, the American Civil Liberties Union’s Earl Warren Civil Liberties Award. Ferlinghetti was named San Francisco’s first poet laureate.

Reviews

[Mat · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book all the way through, TWICE, while waiting in line at the Tax Office to submit my tax filing returns.

This book is a short poetic travelogue of Ferlinghetti's experiences from the late 1970s somewhere in the wilderness - there are many poems about rivers, the ocean, fish, rednecks, and also deep reflections on the human condition and ourselves in general.

Ferlinghetti has done it again - he has written a beautifully vivid, evocative book of poetry which captures the essence of each moment or each feeling with descriptive precision and emotion.

The beauty of a book like this is it is small and very re-readable and fits into your pocket so if you are stuck in a situation like I was with some time to kill, then pull this out and bathe in the words of a true master. While Ginsberg is probably the most famous poet in the world in some ways, Ferlinghetti, in my opinion, writes more consistently brilliant stuff and his underlying messages about the world we live in, its people, its animals, its politicians, its wars are all VERY important to consider before it's too late to turn back the clock. He really is a poet with a strong conscience of what is right and wrong and one of the most important 'unofficial legislators of the world' as another person (was it William Carlos Williams?) once described the role or place of poets in the world in general.

Beautiful stuff once again from a man who is now in his late 90s and still going. Highly recommended.

[Dylan]

I'm reading through Lithub's 365 Books to Start Your Climate Change Library, a reading list in four sections (Classics, Science, Fiction & Poetry, and Ideas). This book is #10 of Part 3: Fiction & Poetry and #28 overall.

Short but potent book of poetry/prose about time spent in the Pacific Northwest and spiraling out to include the whole of nature and it sorry plight, getting particularly pessimistic (and prescient) in the final poems "Rough Notes for a Rough Song of Animals Dying" and "Suicide Haiku."

From "Written in the Greenpeace 'Dreambook'":

Dreamt of
Moby Dick the Great White Whale
cruising about
with a flag flying
"I Am what is left of Wild Nature"
...
And Captain Ahab    Captain Death    Captain Anti-Poetry
Captain Dingbat No Face Captain Apocalypse
at the helm
of the killer ship of Death
And the blue-eyed whales
exhausted and running
but still
singing to each other...

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Want to read more of him even though not really into Beats.