San
Francisco’s 1998 Poet Laureate, Lawrence Ferlinghetti has been one of the
most infl
uential
writers in the last century. One of the things that seems to inspire
Ferlinghetti is political issues and religion. Ferlinghetti also had some
rough times in his life. This may be the cause of some of his
Ferlinghetti’s unique views on humanity and nature.
In the year 1919, Ferlinghetti was born in a city called Yonkers. His mother was insane and sent to an asylum. Ferlinghetti was shipped to France to live with a relative. Upon his return, at the age of five, Ferlinghetti finally learned to speak English. During his teen-age years, Ferlinghetti became an Eagle Scout and joined a street gang by the name of “Parkway Road Pirates.” Ferlinghetti was later arrested for petty theft. Like a man putting a match to dynamite, it wasn’t until Sally Bisland gave Ferlinghetti a copy of Baudelair’s works that Ferlinghetti’s love for creating and reading literature began. Painting, theatre, essays, as well as poetry intrigued Ferlinghetti.
After
attending the University of North Carolina, in Chapel Hill, Ferlinghetti
joined the navy and was stationed in Nagasaki weeks after the nuclear bomb
was dropped. Ferlinghetti went on to teach French and created his own
bookstore, the City Lights Bookstore, with Peter Martin.
Ferlinghetti was one of the fathers of the beat movement and by the 1960’s and 1970’s Ferlinghetti’s ‘A Coney Island of the Mind” was the most popular poetry book in the USA. Winner of five awards and a talented writer, Ferlinghetti uses his past experiences, while applying poetry in order to convey ideas of humanity.