Who Are We Now?

by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Beatnik poetry from the owner of City Lights Bookstore, San Francisco.

Genres: Poetry

66 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

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

[Theo Logos · Rating 4 out of 5]

We have seen the best minds of our generation
destroyed by boredom at poetry readings.
Populist Manifesto

Who are we now, who are we ever,
Skin books parchment bodies libraries of the living
The Jack of Hearts

waving plastic jewels and genitals
Director of Alienation


This Ferlinghetti collection from 1976 lacks the exuberance of his earlier work. Several of these poems, while admittedly good, just didn’t sizzle as I had come to expect from Ferlinghetti’s work. Yet despite its more muted tone, this collection is deep and resonant. Ferlinghetti’s brilliant imagery is still abundant, and his irreverent, sometimes sly humor is still peppered throughout. He calls out complacency and conformity. He sketches the confounding complexity of modern existence. And he ends it all with a call for engagement and action:

Whitman’s wild children still sleeping there,
Awake and walk in the open air.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ferlinghetti is often overlooked in the Beat movement, but, I swear to you, this tiny book of poetry is pure genious.

[laila* · Rating 5 out of 5]

….he spooned up some of the lukewarm soup and politely noted how it tasted 'real weird' in fact it was burnt real bad which I pointed out to the half-ass fry-cook since the waitress had fled and this here cook comes worrying outa his hole in the wall and mumbles
'Sure as hell is burned, ye can smell it' and I says 'You sure as hell can, you ole fucker!' as I lit up a Marlboro with a wood match which I lit with my thumbnail and then we just whirled around on our stools and took out our police magnums which we's supposed to carry even off-duty and let go with a few lil ole blasts right through the ceiling and like really woke that dump up and everybody got under the tables and started praying in Swedish or some other goddanged lingo and my buddy he sauntered up to the jukebox and punched in a couple selector buttons and give the machine a big jolt as I punched in the fry-cook for good measure and the juke shakes all over and then blasts out so fuckin loud that the windows blew out and we got blasted right out the door and everybody come falling out after us and the box just keeps blasting and the holes in the ceiling we'd shot out is still smoking and sure as hell they catch fire and the juke itself catches fire with the Country Western singer still wailing away like as if his balls done got caught in the meatgrinder and it's Kell Robertson singing I Shot a Faggot in the Bath. room' and the local volunteer fire department comes sireening down the highway with antlers on the hood and busts right in with hard-on hoses and let the whole place have it with a bath of deer-blood spurting outa their big-ass hose but the fire kept blazing away in the jumping juke like a redhot pothelly stove about to blow up and the goddamn roof catches fire and everybody in sight freaks out and runs off down the road and over the hill outa sight Man we sure as hell lit that joint up it you know what I mean All good clean fun and we died laughin' Just like in the movies

[Andy Oram · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ferlinghetti is still effervescent in this 1976 book. Beat poetry had gotten mature and perhaps a bit long in the tooth by then--something he seems to hint at in his "Populist Manifesto." But he remains a savvy critic of the "petroleum civilization" and can paint great scenes, wrenching you in a dizzying manner from one to another. Some poems are rich with lyrical imagery ("A Vast Confusion", "Insurgent Mexico"), others with humor ("We have seen the best minds of our generation destroyed by boredom at poetry readings").

[Josh Karaczewski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Besides the classic "Populist Manifesto," my favorite poems in this collection all had a strong San Francisco/West Coast flavor that drew me to them.

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Riveting.

[hence · Rating 4 out of 5]

ferlinghettis italian roots coming through HARD 🤌

[Corey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still relevant. Still influential.

[Dean Oken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Standout Poems:
- I Am You
- The Recurrent Dream
- A River Still to be Found

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay. So what are my thoughts on Ferlinghett? Be mindful that I love Bukowski, Kerouac, am intrigued by Burroughs, and appreciate some of Ginsberg. That being said, how did I find Ferlinghetti? He is different in many ways and similar in many ways to Ginsberg. The lands and travels he seems to make are voyages of the mind. To me at least, some of his work seems forced. However in other works where he seems comfortable talking in his own voice are much more powerful. Though his aloof erudite manner in some of his works distances me as a reader. But maybe its just me, and maybe it was just this work. I am still interested in reading other works to see if his style is different. So... its worth a look see.

[Edmund Davis-Quinn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book of poetry .. lots of stuff and poems to like. Didn't wow me like "A Coney Island of the Mind" but did make we want to keep reading more of Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Good stuff.