Lawrence Ferlinghetti is an American poet, painter, publisher and social activist born in 1919 in New York. He co-founded City Lights Booksellers & Publishers in San Francisco in 1953, the first paperback bookstore in the US. City Lights published Allen Ginsberg's iconic poem "Howl" and faced obscenity charges, helping spark the Beat movement. Ferlinghetti pursued diverse creative and political causes, challenging traditions through his writing, visual art, pacifism, and championing of free speech and social change.

1. Contemporary American Poet, painter, liberal activist, the
cofounder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers.
Born in Bronxville, New York on March 24, 1919

2. He is a man of
many hats and he
brings to each of
his roles an
approach that
challenges
tradition. He does
activities as
diverse as those
of poet, novelist,
playwright,
publisher, critic,
social activist,
and visual artist.
A manwithan
uncharacteristic
personality

3.  Ferlinghetti was born in Bronxville, New York on 1919
 His mother was a French Jewish, his father was an Italian
who immigrated to de United States. He died six months
before Lawrence was born and his mother was committed
to an asylum after his birth.
 He was raised by a French aunt, so he lived in France his
first five years.
 He returned to de U.S. and attended the University of
North Carolina where became a journalist.
 He joined de Navy during the world war II, and was at the
Normandy invasion. A visit to Nagasaki after the atomic
bomb fell turned him into a lifelong pacifist.

4.  After the war he assisted
to the Columbia University
where he earned a
master´s degree in English
literature in 1947
 From Columbia he went to
Paris. He lived there
between 1947 and 1951. He
continued his studios in
this city.
 He married in 1951 in
Florida with Selden Kirby -
Smith

5.  Ferlinghetti settled in San
Francisco in 1953 where he
taught French, painted,
and wrote art criticism.
 In 1953 he founded with
Peter D. Martin City
Lights, an independent
bookstore –publisher
combination.
 Peter D. Martin chose that
name as an homage to the
Chaplin film.
 It was the first all paperback
bookstore in the U.S., at that
time an audacious idea

6.  City Lights Books was a
center of protest, for people
with revolutionary ideas and
people who wanted change
society.
 City Lights Publishers never
intended to publish the
Beats exclusively, and it
always maintained a strong
international list: from
poetry to prose, including
novels, biography, memoir,
essays and cultural studies. It
has also published political
books

7.  In 2001 The San Francisco Board of Supervisors made City
Lights an official historic landmark. It attracts thousands of
book lovers from all over the word.
 Today it offers three floors of new-release hardcovers and
paperbacks from all major publishers, as well as titles from
smaller, independent publishers.

8. The Howl trial
 Ferlinghetti published in
1956 Howl by Gisnsber with
depictions of drug use and
homosexuality. Ferlinguetti
was arrested on obscenity
charges.
 At the end of a long trial,
Howl, was found not
obscene.
 The media attention
stimulated national interest,
and today there are over a
million of copies in print.

9.  Ferlinghetti had associations
with the Beat writers who
make the bookstore their
headquarters
 But he was not a Beat, but a
bohemian of an earlier
generation.
 He self identifies as a philosophical anarchist, an anarchist at
heart.

10.  Ferlinghetti began painting in
Paris in 1948
 His first work was influences
by the New York abstracts
expressionists.
 A more figurative style appears
in his later work.

11. At the stoplight waiting for
the light
nine a.m. downtown San
Francisco
a bright yellow garbage
truck
with two garbagemen in red
plastic blazers
standing on the back stoop
one on each side hanging on
and looking down into
an elegant open Mercedes
with an elegant couple in it
The man
in a hip three-piece linen
suit
with shoulder-length blond
hair & sunglasses
The young blond woman so
casually coifed
with a short skirt and
colored stockings
on the way to his architect’s
office
And both scavengers gazing
down
as from a great distance
at the cool couple
as if they were watching
some odourless TV ad
in which everything is
always possible
And the very red light for an
instant
holding all four close
together
as if anything at all were
possible
between them
across that small gulf
in the high seas
of this democracy
And the two scavengers up
since four a.m.
grungy from their route
on the way home
The older of the two with
grey iron hair
and hunched back
looking down like some
gargoyle Quasimodo
And the younger of the two
also with sunglasses & long
hair
about the same age as the
Mercedes driver