Ferlinghetti to read

SANTA CRUZ, CA–America is a fragmented society. A multitude of contradictory agendas. A dizzy kaleidoscope of protean demographics. World War II may have been the last war that will ever have anything resembling popular support, but even then, when those clean-cut soldiers came marching home with every confidence they had set the world right, there were those who were troubled by the insistent rhythm of the drumbeat. A few who couldn’t get comfortable in button-down, post-war, Joe McCarthy America, who were haunted by the scorched earth of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and found no refuge in the American dream, who were ruined, spent, beaten-down, beaten-up, and beaten-out–a "beat" generation.

That, at least, is how Jack Kerouac described himself and his associates to John Clellon Holmes, and how Holmes characterized the movement in the New York Times article that defined it to the public. But for Kerouac, and most of the other "beats," the term had another meaning as well, "beat" as in beatitude: the bliss of sacred knowledge–knowledge beyond the insular comforts of conventional American society.

The Beat culture is still identified with the city of San Francisco and the North Beach neighborhood in particular, in part because of the city’s long history of tolerance for unconventional lifestyles, and because Lawrence Ferlinghetti chose to live and work there.

Ferlinghetti is recognized as one of the seminal figures and most important poets of the Beat movement. By the time he and his business partner, Peter Martin, opened City Lights Bookstore and founded a magazine by the same name, Ferlinghetti had already spent years living the "beat" life, completed a stint in the Navy, and earned a doctoral degree in poetry from the Sorbonne in Paris. City Lights became one of the most celebrated bookstores in the world, and a mecca for Beat writers and artists. Along with such North Beach attractions as The Coffee Gallery, the Hungry I, and Coffee and Confusion, City Lights was a principal meeting place for a flood of alienated young people drawn to the neighborhood, and the spawning ground for one of America’s most literate, dissident subcultures.

Herb Caen, the late columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, coined the term "Beatnik" in a column he wrote on April 2, 1958. It was a pejorative term that evoked Yiddish slang, but Caen actually borrowed the suffix from the recently launched Soviet "Sputnik." The association was enough to color most Americans’ view during the frostiest days of the Cold War, but Caen’s bongo-toting beatnik burlesque had little to do with the real Beat writers. They were hard at work, not just pushing the envelope of modern American literature, but mailing it in from another galaxy.

When Allen Ginsburg composed the classic Beat poem Howl, Ferlinghetti published it as volume four in the City Lights Pocket Poets series–prompting customs officers and San Francisco police to seize the inventory and charge them both with publishing obscene materials. The ensuing trial, and their ultimate vindication, was a landmark victory for free speech in the United States. Ironically, the enormous publicity generated by the trial made Ginsburg the best known of the Beat poets, and Howl one of the best-selling books of American verse ever published.

Ferlinghetti’s own poetry is simple and muscular, and even though less widely known than Ginsburg’s, it has remained popular for five decades. His best known works are probably A Coney Island of the Mind (1958), and the follow-up volume A Far Rockaway of the Heart (1997). He is still active as a poet and as the proprietor of City Lights Bookstore, which still stands in its original location.

Ferlinghetti is one of the most important figures in a period of American arts that today seems like a golden age. He will read from his works at the Rio Theater, 1205 Soquel Ave, on May 24, sponsored by the UCSC Friends of the Library. The reading begins at 7:30 and goes until 9:30. Admission is free and open to the public.