March 24, 1919

A brief recap of the, still ongoing, career of Lawrence Ferlinghetti (March 24, 1919)

[who was] born in Yonkers, New York. After spending his early childhood in France, he received his BA from the University of North Carolina, an MA from Columbia University, and a PhD from the Sorbonne.

During World War II he served in the US Naval Reserve and was sent to Nagasaki shortly after it was bombed. He married in 1951 and has one daughter and one son.

In 1953, Ferlinghetti and Peter Martin began to publish City Lights magazine. They also opened the City Lights Books Shop in San Francisco to help support the magazine. In 1955, they launched City Light[s] Publishing, a book-publishing venture. City Lights became known as the heart of the “Beat” movement, which included writers such as Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac.

Ferlinghetti is the author of more than thirty books of poetry... He has translated the work of a number of poets including Nicanor Parra, Jacques Prevert, and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Ferlinghetti is also the author of more than eight plays and of the novels Love in the Days of Rage (...1988) and Her (...1966).

In 1994, San Francisco renamed a street in his honor. He was also named the first poet laureate of San Francisco in 1998. His other awards and honors include the lifetime achievement award from the National Book Critics Circle in 2000, the Frost Medal in 2003, and the Literarian Award in 2005, presented for “outstanding service to the American literary community.”

Currently, Ferlinghetti writes a weekly column for the San Francisco Chronicle. He also continues to operate the City Lights bookstore, and he travels frequently to participate in literary conferences and poetry readings.

We excerpt Ferlinghetti's "The Cat."

The cat                               licks its paw and         lies down in                             the bookshelf nook                                                                  ...                                                           .... she is the sphinx with                         all the time in the world                                              in the desert of her time              The cat                     knows where flies die                                sees ghosts in motes of air                                                    and shadows in sunbeams She hears                  .....        the hum in the wires of houses                            and the hum of the universe              in interstellar spaces                                                       but                 prefers domestic places                              and the hum of the heater "The Cat" was published in These Are My Rivers: New & Selected Poems, 1955-1993 (1993).