Ed RIP Lawrence Ferlinghetti

[bruto]

A long long life indeed, productive as both publisher and poet.

Jumping keyboard! The title was supposed to be RIP Lawrence Ferlinghetti!

e.t.a. thanks, mods!

 

[Resume]

In Goya's greatest scenes we seem to see
the people of the world
exactly at the moment when
they first attained the title of
'suffering humanity'
They writhe upon the page
in a veritable rage
of adversity
Heaped up
groaning with babies and bayonets
under cement skies
in an abstract landscape of blasted trees
bent statues bats wings and beaks
slippery gibbets
cadavers and carnivorous cocks
and all the final hollering monsters
of the
'imagination of disaster'
they are so bloody real
it is as if they really still existed.

RIP

 

[Vixen]

I loved the City Lights brand. There was a bookshop at Camden Market, London, that sold imports from Ferlinghetti - including cassette tapes of people like Ginsberg reciting 'Howl' live - which I often frequented. Read them all. Bukowski, Burroughs, Kerouac (whom I really rate as a great writer). Whilst the Beat Generation was a bit before my time, nonetheless, it inspired me to take to the road and hitchhike to Cornwall, age fifteen. How naive I was!

 

[Norman Alexander]

I do hope there are more in Frisco to carry on his legacy.