Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti , 1919-, American author and publisher, b. Yonkers, N.Y. In 1951 he moved to San Francisco and helped found the City Lights Bookshop, which became a center for writers of the beat generation . He has written volumes of colloquial verse such as A Coney Island of the Mind (1958), Starting from San Francisco (1967), and Open Eye, Open Heart (1974), as well as essays, broadsides, and the surrealist novel Her (1960). He encouraged and published many Beat writers, notably Allen Ginsberg .

Ferlinghetti, Lawrence (1919– ) US writer. A beat movement poet, he opened (1953) the City Lights bookstore in San Francisco and began publishing beat authors, such as Allen Ginsberg. His works include A Coney Island of the Mind (1958) and Starting from San Francisco (1961).

Ferlinghetti, Lawrence (1920– ), American Beat poet. Although born in New York, he was the mainstay of the San Francisco Renaissance—the West Coast wing of the Beat movement. In 1953 he co-founded City Lights Books, a publishing house and bookstore that specialized in Beat poetry. He was arrested in 1956 for publishing Ginsberg's Howl and wrote a full account of the trial (‘Horn on Howl’) for the Evergreen Review (1957). His own work includes poetry collections such as A Coney Island of the Mind (1958) as well as two volumes of plays. Unlike many of his contemporaries he disapproved of the Beat's emphasis on the self and argued for a more directly political project with which they could be aligned. A fervent supporter of the Cuban revolution, he composed the poem ‘One Thousand Fearful Words for Fidel Castro’ in 1960.