Ferlinghetti's Greatest Poems

by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Nancy Peters (Editor)

Overview

At last, a compact, powerful overview of one of America’s most beloved and radical poets—spanning more than six decades of work

At last, just in time for his 99th birthday, a powerful overview of one of America's most beloved poets: New Directions is proud to present a swift, terrific chronological selection of Ferlinghetti's poems, spanning more than six decades of work and presenting one of modern poetry's greatest achievements. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811227124
Publisher:	New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	11/21/2017
Pages:	144
Sales rank:	244,380
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.00(h) x 3.10(d)

About the Author

In 1953 Lawrence Ferlinghetti cofounded City Lights, the first paperback bookstore in the United States, a Mecca for millions. His Coney Island of the Mind is one of the best-selling volumes of poetry by any living American poet. Born in Yonkers, New York, in 1919, Ferlinghetti has received the Robert Frost Memorial Medal and the first Literarian Award of the National Book Foundation.

Nancy Peters is an American writer as well as the former editor-in-chief of City Lights Books, which she co-owns with Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Editorial Reviews

[Ferlinghetti] knows how to craft a hook. His lines have an easy, welcoming flow…He has a gift for helping you hear what needs to be said, free of impenetrable filters. He is allergic to willful obscurity…Returning to Ferlinghetti is ultimately about returning to the romantic associations of the milieu that produced Ferlinghetti, so it makes sense that some of Ferlinghetti's most plangent stanzas are the ones in which he looks back at the heyday of the Beats…Maybe there's no way to dissociate Ferlinghetti's poetry from the nostalgic gauze of various North Beach beatnik tropes—proto-hipsters wearing berets and listening to bebop and smoking French cigarettes, etc.—but what remains intact in the poems…is the fresh, youthful energy of that moment. The liberating pulse can still be pretty contagious. His high points are the poems that you wish you could listen to in a car, on a long coastal highway, with the windows rolled down—and you certainly can't say that about Robert Lowell.

The New York Times Book Review - Jeff Gordinier

"He has a gift for helping you hear what needs to be said... His high points are the poems that you wish you could listen to in a car, on a long coastal highway with the windows rolled down."

The New York Times - Jeff Gordinier

"Lawrence gets you laughing, then hits you with the truth."

Francis Ford Coppola

"A brave man and a brave poet."

Bob Dylan