Lawrence Ferlinghetti

From Zappa Wiki Jawaka
Revision as of 14:02, 20 September 2005 by Emdebe (talk | contribs)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti ((fûr´lng-gt´)), born Lawrence Ferling, is name-checked on the cover of "Freak Out!" (1966) under the heading "These People Have Contributed Materially In Many Ways To Make Our Music What It Is. Please Do Not Hold It Against Them". He was an American author, poet, playwright, novelist and publisher, born in Yonkers, N.Y (1919). He attended the University of North Carolina (B.A. 1941), Columbia University (M.A. 1948), and the Sorbonne (1948-51). In 1951 he moved to San Francisco, taught French (1951-53) and helped found the City Lights Bookshop (1952), 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 (he was even regarded as a founder of the Beat poetry movement), notably Allen Ginsberg. He was concidered an important west coast bohemian. He published "Howl" and was therefore involved in censorship court battles.