Lawrence Ferlinghetti – Poet, publisher, bookseller, painter, activist Born March 24, 1919; died February 22, 2021 Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who has died aged 101, was an American literary revolutionary, who opened out the world of books to all. As a poet, his work possessed a pared-back directness and Zen simplicity. Ferlinghetti wrote for the tongue as much as the page, and delivered his words in energetic singsong tones that paved the way for spoken word scenes to come. His 1958 collection, Coney Island of the Mind, sold more than a million copies. He once said that ‘art should be accessible to all people, not just a handful of highly educated intellectuals’. As a bookseller, Ferlinghetti’s shop, City Lights, adopted a similarly egalitarian, open-all-hours approach that made it the nexus of San Francisco’s underground Beat scene in search of late night literary fixes. City Lights was the first shop to sell cheap paperback editions of quality literature in much the same way Jim
An archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper. Effete No Obstacle.