Lawrence Furlenghetti
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The scene shows fewer tumbrils
but more maimed citizens
in painted cars
and they have strange license plates
and engines
that devour America
- From the very first poem of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's debut poetry collection: A Coney Island of the Mind, a prime example of his revolutionary, politically motivated, however classically grounded, style- a literary attack.
Ferlinghetti is widely considered to be one of the founders and one of the major artistic influences of the Beatnik movement and in a general way, the literature of the late twentieth and twenty-first century. Born in 1919 in Yonkers New York, Ferlinghetti, after studying at the University of North Carolina, Columbia University, and the Sorbonne in Paris, settled in San Francisco. His poetry reflects all of these locales, and often imagery from both American coasts is alluded to. Initially, Ferlinghetti made his name by creating and operating City Lights Bookstore, in San Francisco. The store functioned as both a site of collaboration and the means for underground beat poetry to be published. The controversy surrounding his publication of a peers' work, Allen Ginsberg's Howl, in 1956 brought Ferlinghetti to the nation's attention as he defended literary freedom of speech. In 1958, he published his debut, and it soon became one of the most popular poetic works of the 1960's and 70's. He has continued publishing up until the present, and A Far Rockaway of the Heart, released in 1997, received critical and popular acclaim. He also has had major success as a painter; his work can be found in the Butler Museum and the Palazzo delle Espozioni in Rome...