I always agreed with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, that Ferlinghetti was not a Beat Poet. He was like a Beat Older Brother; A Beat Renaissance Man. Bookstore owner, poet, publisher, painter, advocate, champion, and everything else.
I did feel the loss of his passing the other day. Another tangible connection to the last major literary movement in America is gone. Sure, there have been great writers since the Beats, and styles like Modernism, Post-Modernism, and Absurdism, but all of that was created and existed in an intellectual definition sort of a way; Disparate blips on a literary map that had data points in common. But the Beats did meet up, discuss, drank, and traded anti-establishment ideas in person. Overly romanticized? Clearly, but it still was a flesh and bone movement with connections between artists. And again, another of those figures is gone.
I made it to City Lights Bookstore once, but I wasn’t able to go inside. I had a job interview at a theatre, which ran long, so I only was able to do a pass by on the street, before I had to run and go catch my ferry ride back to Larkspur. I thought I would be back, and have a chance to spend time in the store, but I didn’t get the job, and well… life got in the way. I stood in front of City Lights for just a moment, looking at it. A place I had read about forever, or at least high school, and it was more a confirmation that it did exist, it was real. That these people did the things I read about.
Ferlinghetti ensured that we heard voices, and ideas, and thoughts that went counter to prevailing winds. It took courage to publish Howl, and to follow it all the way through the court case that established the redeeming social importance of the poetry.
Thanks, Lawrence. We needed you.
