People Make the World a Beautiful Place
“Poetry is the shortest distance between two humans.” - Lawrence Ferlinghetti
There’s a narrow staircase that ascends from a ground level wooden floor of a shop in North Beach, San Francisco, on Columbus Avenue, where people have gathered in a small room since 1953 to hear poetry read out loud. This is where many of the Beat Poets found their first publishing support through the vision of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a poet, who started a small poetry press, the City Lights Pocket Poets series.
The pocket series famously published Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” in 1956 and then fought the censorship of this book which provides rulings that support many of our first amendment rights today.
Ferlinghetti started City Lights with Peter Martin in 1953 for $500 each. Ferlinghetti took over in 1955 and I remember seeing him there several times when I worked downtown San Francisco and would walk over to City Lights at lunch to find a collection of new poems. I stop in every time I get to San Francisco and it’s always filled with great energy.
Mr. Ferlinghetti died on Monday at 101 years old. As readers, as poets, as people with the freedom to write and speak our minds, he’s done a lot for us. He will be missed.
“Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Poet Who Nurtured the Beats, Dies at 101” - Great article about Ferlinghetti’s life, poems, art, and bookstore.
City Lights Books - Great little bookstore with a wooden staircase to a room full of poetry books.
“Howl” - The poem by Allen Ginsberg. Read it online or hear it read by Allen Ginsberg at Reed College in 1956.
“Underwear” - poem by and read by Lawrence Ferlighetti
“The World is a Beautiful Place” - poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti