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Celebrating Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919 – 2021)

MARY NELL AND HER HUSBAND STOPPED TO TAKE ONE LAST PHOTO BEFORE LEAVING SAN FRANCISCO.

Ferlinghetti was the author of more than thirty books of poetry and the founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers in San Francisco, California.  

These are Mary Nell Hawk’s 2017 photos of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Bookshop. 

As you see, on the outside was a big illustrated mural-poem:

NOTHING 

IS HARDER

ON THE SOUL

THAN THE

SMELL

OF

DREAMS

WHILE 

THEY ARE

EVAPORATING

STOP

THE

DEPORTATIONS

POEM / READING:   Poetry as Insurgent Art (I am signaling you through the flames)

POET / AUTHOR:   Lawrence Ferlinghetti   (1919-2021)

I am signaling you through the flames.

The North Pole is not where it used to be.

Manifest Destiny is no longer manifest.

Civilization self-destructs.

Nemesis is knocking at the door.

What are poets for, in such an age?

What is the use of poetry?

The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it.

If you would be a poet, create works capable of answering the challenge of apocalyptic times, even if this meaning sounds apocalyptic.

You are Whitman, you are Poe, you are Mark Twain, you are Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay, you are Neruda and Mayakovsky and Pasolini, you are an American or a non-American, you can conquer the conquerors with words….

SAME SCENE, DIFFERENT SHOT.