What is the Legacy of Beat Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti?

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https://www.npr.org/2021/02/23/3752...at-poet-and-small-press-publisher-dies-at-101

 

[Klystron]

Ferlinghetti's 'City Lights' bookstore was a sometime gathering place for my family during visits to San Francisco. Browse cool books then enjoy a good restaurant. I thought he also owned 'The Anarchist Bookstore' in the Upper Haight because I saw him there twice and from the type of books they carried but no mention in his obituary. City Lights certainly carried some of the weirdest publications I have read.

Legend has it that long before the internet, the bulletin boards in his bookstores were the model for the 'alt.' electronic bulletin boards on the original worldwide web. People posted colored cards offering services, items for sale, meetings, music gigs, rooms for rent, etc.

 

[phinds]

I remember being fascinated by his poetry when I was in college

 

[mcastillo356]

He fought in Second World War, at a submarine chaser, in Northatlantic ocean. Thanks from Europe, Ferlinghetti.

 

[Klystron]

This obit published in the Washington Post two days ago captures the spirit and politics of the Navy veteran turned 'Beat' publisher.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s life was full of lessons about what makes American culture great: the courage to stand against censorship, a profound love of language and the creation of art that expresses unspoken desires and dissatisfaction — and creates the possibility of something new.

Though only briefly mentioning Ferlinghetti's own poetry, the article relates his strong ties with Beat writers William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsburg. Preferring prose to poetry, I have read everything I could find published by the first two authors including some truly weird manuscripts compiled and kept alive at City Lights such as this excerpt from this Burroughs/Kerouac link:

And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks is a collaborative novel written by both Jack Kerouac and Burroughs. They wrote alternating chapters. It’s a crime novel, and was finished in 1945 but not published until 2008.

If memory serves, I read a mimeographed version of "And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks" at City Lights Bookstore in the 1990's.

 

[waternohitter]

Really sad to hear, There are so much things that I was fascinated by this guy.