San Francisco Poems
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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Here are all of Ferlinghetti's poems set in the city he has lived in for over half a century. He brings alive, with wit and lyricism, scenes of city life: a Giants baseball game, the Green Street Marching Mortuary Band, bohemian North Beach, Golden Gate Park, yachts on the Bay, and more. Also included are historic photographs, scattered prose pieces, and the text of his mischievous inaugural address with his vision of the city's history as a poetic center and suggestions for keeping it that show more way. Lawrence Ferlinghettiis a bookman, painter and author of poetry, fiction, essays and plays. His most recent books areHow to Paint Sunlight(poetry) andLove in the Days of Rage(fiction). show lessTags
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An excerpt about the Green Street Mortuary marching band on the back cover led me to buy this book without even looking inside the book. Only a true native would know about this weird tidbit!
I consider San Francisco my home town, and Mr. Felinghetti is a defender of the spirit that made the city great. His poems express his activism, passion, and criticism for the city. The poems profess love for the city and its people but also expose its flaws. They are wordy, not haikus. Many have continuous thoughts that never quite take a breath. They are comprehensible, ready for the masses (i.e., me, the poems illiterate). They are simple, yet expressive. They aren’t tender and sweet but are raw and grating, and they deliver the message. This show more passage was in his inaugural address as the poet laureate of SF: “…The manifesto was not a very original Whitmanian call for a universal poetry, with what I call ‘public surface’ – a poetry with a very accessible commonsensual surface that can be understood by most everyone without a very literate education…”
Three poems stand out for me.
“Challenges to Young Poets” reads similar to the “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” song were advices are shared.
“I Saw One of Them” addresses the homeless in the city; they are not an invisible population in the author’s eyes.
“Dog” roams the city “…with a real tale to tell and a real tail to tell it with…” A rather adorable poem.
In my youth I’ve passed by this nonchalant storefront hundreds of times if not possibly thousands. As an adult, I finally understood the landmark significance of the City Lights Booksellers and Publishers. Opened by a poet, this store grips tightly onto its independent spirit maintaining the few strands of bohemian flavors that remains in North Beach district, which holds dear some of my fondest memories. show less
I consider San Francisco my home town, and Mr. Felinghetti is a defender of the spirit that made the city great. His poems express his activism, passion, and criticism for the city. The poems profess love for the city and its people but also expose its flaws. They are wordy, not haikus. Many have continuous thoughts that never quite take a breath. They are comprehensible, ready for the masses (i.e., me, the poems illiterate). They are simple, yet expressive. They aren’t tender and sweet but are raw and grating, and they deliver the message. This show more passage was in his inaugural address as the poet laureate of SF: “…The manifesto was not a very original Whitmanian call for a universal poetry, with what I call ‘public surface’ – a poetry with a very accessible commonsensual surface that can be understood by most everyone without a very literate education…”
Three poems stand out for me.
“Challenges to Young Poets” reads similar to the “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” song were advices are shared.
“I Saw One of Them” addresses the homeless in the city; they are not an invisible population in the author’s eyes.
“Dog” roams the city “…with a real tale to tell and a real tail to tell it with…” A rather adorable poem.
In my youth I’ve passed by this nonchalant storefront hundreds of times if not possibly thousands. As an adult, I finally understood the landmark significance of the City Lights Booksellers and Publishers. Opened by a poet, this store grips tightly onto its independent spirit maintaining the few strands of bohemian flavors that remains in North Beach district, which holds dear some of my fondest memories. show less
A wonderful collection of poems by Ferlinghetti about his beloved San Francisco. Each poem captures a different aspect of the city and its people, what Ferlinghetti loved and what he detested about what happens in his city. One of my favorites of the collection is "A Report on a Happening in Washington Square, San Francisco," which talks not only about a beautiful area of the city, but of lives being joined and lives going their own way. Ferlinghetti's poems give a real, gritty, loving sense of a city for those who live there and for those who know it through visits.
Every so often it's good to read something to remind me that poetry doesn't have to be minimal to be good. Not all the poems in this slim volume is a masterpiece, perhaps not even most of them, but a few of them did make me take notice. It's also fun to see the photos reproduced at the end depicting the Beats at various points in their epoch.
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147+ Works 6,645 Members
Lawrence Ferlinghetti was born Lawrence Monsanto Ferling in Yonkers, New York on March 24, 1919. He received a B. A. from the University of North Carolina, a M. A. from Columbia University, and a Ph.D from the Sorbonne. During World War II, he served in the U. S. Naval Reserve and was sent to Nagasaki shortly after it was bombed. In 1953, he and show more Peter Martin began to publish City Lights magazine. They also opened the City Lights Books Shop in San Francisco to help support the magazine. In 1955, they launched City Light Publishing, which became known as the heart of the "Beat" movement. Ferlinghetti is the author of more than thirty books of poetry including Time of Useful Consciousness, Poetry as Insurgent Art, How to Paint Sunlight, A Far Rockaway of the Heart, Over All the Obscene Boundaries: European Poems and Transitions, Who Are We Now?, The Secret Meaning of Things, and A Coney Island of the Mind. He is also the author of more than eight plays and of the novels Love in the Days of Rage and Her. He has translated the work of a number of poets including Nicanor Parra, Jacques Prevert, and Pier Paolo Pasolini. He received the lifetime achievement award from the National Book Critics Circle in 2000, the Frost Medal in 2003, and the Literarian Award in 2005, presented for "outstanding service to the American literary community." He was named the first poet laureate of San Francisco in 1998. He writes a weekly column for the San Francisco Chronicle. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- San Francisco Poems
- Original publication date
- 2001
- Important places
- San Francisco, California, USA
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Statistics
- Members
- 144
- Popularity
- 226,599
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (3.89)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 2
