Lawrence Ferlinghetti Archives

by Victoria Lucas

I will never forget that afternoon when I first saw Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

It might have been a weekend, but I spent many evenings after work in North Beach, either going to see The Committee (improv) at 622 Broadway, a movie at an independent moviehouse, or volunteer at the Playhouse theater. So I would often pass his bookstore, walking from my apartment (now at Army and 25th) or taking the cable car. It was still light, in any case. He was surrounded by a crowd, but I had a height advantage from the lay of the land at the off-grid intersection of Columbus and Broadway, and he could see me and I him. It seemed to me that our eyes locked and my world changed. (Cue romantic music.)

Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr in "Affair to Remember"

But not for long. (Music stops abruptly with the sound of a needle scratching a record.) He went off with some people and that was that. End of story. My affair to remember (thank you very much, Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, but no thanks) was with the bookstore and not with the poet. (In any case, I'm now seeing someone, and we're moving in together.)

As for the books, I should admit that I was a virgin when it came to political bookstores. This was my very first time coming into contact with leftist publications and ideas beyond Ramparts Magazine and Stop-the-War demonstrations. That was only foreplay to the heavy breathing of anarchism and leftward utopianism, and the airy sparkle (or existential wail) of life among the poets.

One of Ferlinghetti's books from City Lights Publishers

This is particularly heavy for me since I'm currently working for a band of lawyers who are creating this type of bank card like the Diner's Club or gasoline or department store cards. (They call it "MasterCard," including Crocker Bank.) I am learning far too much about both how lawyers operate (meetings for which I type minutes but that never happened) and how Xerox machines work (some days I'm just all over black plastic dust that doesn't come off easily–one has to stir the stuff occasionally, you see) and how the frequent repairmen do too.

I'm not entirely sure which is the real me, the junior legal secretary or the beatnik-in-waiting. But I'm pretty sure it's the beatnik; like the Zen koan of the man dreaming he's a butterfly vs. the butterfly dreaming he's a man, I think I'm the butterfly.

So walking into that bookstore is an experience both warm and scary, both imaginary and real, the lights glinting off the windows, the chairs all occupied before I get there, the discussions I hear, and the erotic feel of the books themselves. I've learned it's the only all-paperback bookstore, that City Lights became a publisher 2 years after Ferlinghetti opened the bookstore, and that (with the help of the ACLU) Ferlinghetti beat a rap after publishing Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" for the first time ("obscenity"–when even I know it's the government that's the obscenity). (Oops, sorry, did I just violate a norm? It must be the butterfly fluttering inside me.)

The "obscene" book

My affair will only end (and maybe only temporarily?) when I leave San Francisco. I keep coming back to California: born in LA, move to Tucson, move to San Francisco. What's next? Only time will tell.

I digress. I love North Beach. I wander around there every weekend. I think my new boyfriend and I will settle here for a spell close by. And then maybe I can spend even more time wandering from the Spaghetti Factory to City Lights to the Playhouse to The Committee and beyond.

The "obscene" bookstore

In the meantime, I sometimes take the cable car (and/or I walk) to City Lights. After seeing that there was no pressure to buy (an important part of the experience, given my still impecunious state), I take advantage of what appears to be a policy that no one bothers people who read the books or even the magazines. They also have great bulletin boards with notices of readings, concerts, plays, everything that's Going On. The more people inside the windows in the brightly lit store, reading, the more come in from outside–and maybe buy something. I don't buy very much at City Lights, but I am becoming familiar with a lot of titles, a lot of poetry, and a lot of polemics, politics, Asian and Indian religions, new ideas.

As I caress the new ideas, and they sweet-talk me, I still find an analytical spirit within me that doubts that their ideas of the future are any more valid than other promises I've heard. I resist the temptation to embrace them fully, even though I am also pushed into the arms of the left by Pacifica Radio (KPFA/KPFB with studios in SF & Berkeley) and its reports from the Vietnam front sent by intrepid reporters from the Christian Science Monitor who manage to elude the US government and find out what's really happening there. I try to be clear-eyed about what I swallow, but sometimes it's not so easy to avoid becoming emotional about the fate of the human species.

And then there's my new boy friend. Mel is an insurance inspector (steam boiler) who has spent much of his life at sea, a graduate of the Merchant Marine Academy. While having a girl in every port, he became seriously leftist and went to meetings of the Communist Party at one time. (He finally rejected the Party as being too reactionary.) We have both decided, I think, that the only hopeful politics are radical, but nonviolent and seriously sexual.

Sometimes I feel like the City Lights logo

We met because he is a sometime actor and poet who wants to make films. So do I, and we met in such a group–but I want to write for them. In the group we met a filmmaker who only lacked a camera. Marks that we were, we bought him a camera, believing that we would be working together. Guess who absconded with the camera–it wasn't us. So we bonded over the loss and resolved to be less gullible. But we still believe in each other and try not to believe everything we read or hear (or everyone who asks for money).

So Mel has had to put up with my affair with the bookstore–after all, we aren't married (yet). He reads, but he's not in love with print as I am. Meanwhile, please excuse me while I get back to my copy of The Berkeley Barb, for which I occasionally write.

by Mx. Kris Vyas-Myall

Poetry has an unusual place within the science fiction and fantasy community. Many of the earliest and most influential works come from poetry, such as the Norse epics or Spenser’s Faerie Queen, continuing into the 19th century with pieces such as Rosetti’s Goblin Market and Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came by Robert Browning.

This has continued in the speculative magazines, with poems regularly featured in F&SF and Galaxy.

However, introduction of more experimental forms has come to be as important a dividing line as the "message" and "anti-message" divide we have seen debated for the last decade. Even more literary writers such as Brian Aldiss are not always in favour, describing William Burroughs as “piss” in a letter to Zenith.

For myself I love to see more experimental forms and beat poetry, the likes we have seen emerging in the post-war era, ever since I read Donald Allen’s anthology, The New American Poetry.

So as such I was fascinated to see on BBC News that there would be a meeting of International Poets at the Royal Albert Hall.

Me and my wife applied and were pleased to receive tickets. It was a fascinating list of poets

With the performance starting at 6:30 I was able to meet my wife just outside our offices and grab an early bite to eat before taking the underground round to South Kensington (thankfully my offices only being a short hop away).

Heading into the Royal Albert Hall we found the place to be packed, causing me to momentarily worry we had turned up on the wrong day and Bob Dylan was playing here again. The Royal Albert Hall seats around five thousand people and to see this many interested in seeing Avant-Garde poetry was a shock and a delight.

On the way in people were handing out flowers and the whole thing was a curious atmosphere, with a stage covered in foliage and the clanking of bells. Almost funereal. There was also a lot of smoke about but I think the was more from the audience than an attempt to create a specific mood. (We were up in the gods ourselves so did not get as affected by this as much as those in the stalls much have done, which is a good thing given my wife suffers from asthma).

This evening is an experiment and we are finding out what happens when you put 5000 people in a hall with a few poets… – Alexander Trocchi

As it was a very long night I won’t take you through all the performances but will highlight some of the most memorable:

Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s To Fuck Is To Love Again was an excellent crowd pleaser. Making brilliant use of irony, metre and giving a rousing performance, he wove a journey about sexual repression and the pointlessness of division.

Harry Fainlight’s The Spider was frustratingly interrupted and he took it hard. However, the poem is a brilliant dark piece that he performed really well under the circumstances. It takes a dark journey into the mind of someone who believes themselves being transformed into a spider and how this compares to their own mental state. If it was published in Fantastic, I am sure fantasy fans would be devoting many letters pages debating its merits (whilst I would myself be giving it five stars).

Adrian Mitchell's poem To Whom it May Concern was a little more traditional than some of the others, having spent a long time on the British poetry scene and in anti-war causes, but probably my favourite of the evening (and many others given the level of applause he received). It is an angry piece against the war in Vietnam and contains amazing imagery:

I smell something burning, hope it's just my brains.
They're only dropping peppermints and daisy-chains

Ernst Jandl gave a fascinating performance that was mostly through sounds but was really meaningful nonetheless. This included one that was done entirely through sneezing! I had never heard sound poetry before but it is a really interesting and something I would like to see more of.

Allen Ginsberg was obviously the star attraction and gave a performance in his usual powerful style, sounding like he is forcing the words out in a flow of emotion. These included his epic The Change and a brand new one combining viscerally disturbing imagery, despair and current politics.

He also read New York Bird by Russian poet Andrei Vosnesensky. Apparently Russian authorities would not allow Vosenesky to perform his own poem, so Ginsberg performed it in his place.

Some of the performances were less memorable and there were also some highly expected performers, like Pablo Neruda, who did not end up performing.

There were some downsides to the event. The whole thing seemed very disorganised, with no official running order. Nor was it really all their best performances. I have heard records of some of those present that have been significantly better.

It was also disappointing how all of the performers were men. Why not invite some excellent contemporary women poets like Diane Di Prima or Denise Levertov?

What was most fascinating about the whole experience was seeing these poets live, and being with so many others people who were interested in this kind of art. Whilst we there we saw the event being filmed, so perhaps it will spread even further?

Either way it was an exciting performance to be at and shows a healthy future for experimental writing around the world. The event lasted more than four hours so we headed home for the weekend very tired but also elated at what we had seen.

Will the poems of this calibre and experimental nature be featured in the SF magazines? It's hard to say, but I surely won't find it aught amiss if they do!

[Don't miss the next episode of The Journey Show, featuring singer-songwriter Harry Seldon. He'll be playing a mix of Dylan, Simon, and some unique original compositions!]

55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction

Galactic Journey

Tag Archives: Lawrence Ferlinghetti

[April 4, 1966] A Bookstore to Remember (City Lights)

[June 16, 1965] The International Poetry Incarnation

55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction