Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the last great poet of the Beat Generation who helped create America's counter-culture movement in the 1950s, dies from lung disease a month shy of his 102nd birthday
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the last great poet of the Beat Generation who helped to establish the counter-culture movement of 1950s America through his City Lights bookshop and publishers, has died. He was 101.
Ferlinghetti, a San Francisco institution, died Monday at his home, his son Lorenzo Ferlinghetti said. A month shy of his 102nd birthday, Ferlinghetti died 'in his own room,' holding the hands of his son and his son's girlfriend, 'as he took his last breath.' The cause of death was lung disease. Ferlinghetti had received the first dose of the COVID vaccine last week, his son said Tuesday.
'We love you, Lawrence,' City Lights said on Twitter, adding that Ferlinghetti died on Monday.
Born on March 24, 1919, the New York native took part in the D-Day landings of World War II and saw the horror of atomic-bombed Nagasaki before ending up in San Francisco in 1953 and co-founding City Lights.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a San Francisco institution, died Monday at his home, his son Lorenzo Ferlinghetti said. A month shy of his 102nd birthday, Ferlinghetti died 'in his own room' (pictured in 2018)
The cause of death was lung disease. Ferlinghetti had received the first dose of the COVID vaccine last week, his son said Tuesday (pictured in 1988)
The bookstore became the outlet of Beat expression, a meeting point for its free-wheeling poets and, two years later, the first publisher of its leading authors including Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg.
His 1958 compilation, 'A Coney Island of the Mind,' sold hundreds of thousands of copies in the U.S. alone. Long an outsider from the poetry community, Ferlinghetti once joked that he had 'committed the sin of too much clarity.' He called his style 'wide open' and his work, influenced in part by e.e. cummings, was often lyrical and childlike: 'Peacocks walked/under the night trees/in the lost moon/light/when I went out/looking for love,' he wrote in 'Coney Island.'
He was arrested on obscenity charges in 1957 for publishing Ginsberg's 'Howl,' considered an anthem of the disaffected Beat generation with its opening line, 'I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.
He was arrested on obscenity charges in 1957 for publishing Ginsberg's 'Howl,' considered an anthem of the disaffected Beat generation with its opening line, 'I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked
City Lights said Ferlinghetti (pictured outside the store in 1998) 'continued to write and publish new work up until he was 100 years old, and his work has earned him a place in the American canon'
The poem, which refers to homosexuality and drugs, was criticized as explicit, but Ferlinghetti was acquitted in a highly publicized trial at which the judge ruled it was 'not ... without redeeming social importance.'
Ferlinghetti also was a playwright, novelist, translator and painter and had many admirers among musicians. In 1976, he recited 'The Lord´s Prayer' at the Band´s farewell concert, immortalized in Martin Scorsese´s 'The Last Waltz.' The folk-rock band Aztec Two-Step lifted its name from a line in the title poem of Ferlinghetti´s 'Coney Island' book: 'A couple of Papish cats/is doing an Aztec two-step.' Ferlinghetti also published some of the earliest film reviews by Pauline Kael, who with The New Yorker became one of the country´s most influential critics.
City Lights said Ferlinghetti 'continued to write and publish new work up until he was 100 years old, and his work has earned him a place in the American canon.'
He received an honorary prize from the National Book Critics Circle in 2000 and five years later was given a National Book Award medal for 'his tireless work on behalf of poets and the entire literary community'
Ferlinghetti (left) and Allen Ginsberg at the Albert Memorial in South Kensington, London, 11th June 1965
'His curiosity was unbounded and his enthusiasm was infectious, and we will miss him greatly,' the shop said in a statement on its website.
He received an honorary prize from the National Book Critics Circle in 2000 and five years later was given a National Book Award medal for 'his tireless work on behalf of poets and the entire literary community.'
'The dominant American mercantile culture may globalize the world, but it is not the mainstream culture of our civilization,' Ferlinghetti said upon receiving the award. 'The true mainstream is made, not of oil, but of literarians, publishers, bookstores, editors, libraries, writers and readers, universities and all the institutions that support them.'
In 2012, Ferlinghetti won the Janus Pannonius International Poetry Prize from the Hungarian PEN Club. When he learned the country´s right-wing government was a sponsor, he turned the award down.
Conclave of poets assembled at City Lights. Ferlinghetti is pictured upper tow row, second from the right
