Renato ferlinghetti biography

Lawrence Ferlinghetti helped to spark the San Francisco literary renaissance of the ’s and the subsequent Beat movement in American poetry, and he’s still going strong, having served as first Poet Laureate of San Francisco () and continuing to write a weekly column, “Poetry as News,” for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Poet, novelist, playwright, translator, publisher, essayist, activist, and painter, Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s life and writing “stand as models of the existentially authentic and engaged.” Long before the advent of café bookstores, Ferlinghetti co-founded the City Lights Book Shop, the first book store in the United States devoted exclusively to paperbacks.

Renato ferlinghetti biography wikipedia

Ferlinghetti’s fledgling publishing venture, City Lights Pocket Books, became world-famous during the court battle that ensued when Allen Ginsberg’s first book, Howl, was impounded for obscenity. Ultimately, Howl was declared literature, not pronography.

C