A Coney Island of the Mind

by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Ferlinghetti is a national treasure, and his voice has become part of our collective conscience. Some of his most famous poems from this collection such as "I Am Waiting" and "Junkman's Obbligato" were created for jazz accompaniment. Written in the conservative post-war 1950s, his poems still resonate, as they will continue to resonate, with a joyful anti-establishment fervor that beats a rhythmic portrait of humanity. Ferlinghetti sings of a world in which "the heart flops over / gasping 'Love'," "cadillacs fell thru the trees like rain," and where "we are the same people / only further from home / on freeways fifty lanes wide."


This special 50th Anniversary Edition comes with a newly recorded CD of the author reading the 29 poems of the title section of A Coney Island of the Mind as well as selections from Pictures of the Gone World.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Classics, American, The United States Of America, Literature, New York

96 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

A prominent voice of the wide-open poetry movement that began in the 1950s, Lawrence Ferlinghetti has written poetry, translation, fiction, theater, art criticism, film narration, and essays. Often concerned with politics and social issues, Ferlinghetti’s poetry countered the literary elite's definition of art and the artist's role in the world. Though imbued with the commonplace, his poetry cannot be simply described as polemic or personal protest, for it stands on his craftsmanship, thematics, and grounding in tradition.

Ferlinghetti was born in Yonkers in 1919, son of Carlo Ferlinghetti who was from the province of Brescia and Clemence Albertine Mendes-Monsanto. Following his undergraduate years at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he served in the U.S. Navy in World War II as a ship's commander. He received a Master’s degree from Columbia University in 1947 and a Doctorate de l’Université de Paris (Sorbonne) in 1950. From 1951 to 1953, when he settled in San Francisco, he taught French in an adult education program, painted, and wrote art criticism. In 1953, with Peter D. Martin (son of Carlo Tresca) he founded City Lights Bookstore, the first all-paperbound bookshop in the country, and by 1955 he had launched the City Lights publishing house.

The bookstore has served for half a century as a meeting place for writers, artists, and intellectuals. City Lights Publishers began with the Pocket Poets Series, through which Ferlinghetti aimed to create an international, dissident ferment. His publication of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl & Other Poems in 1956 led to his arrest on obscenity charges, and the trial that followed drew national attention to the San Francisco Renaissance and Beat movement writers. (He was overwhelmingly supported by prestigious literary and academic figures, and was acquitted.) This landmark First Amendment case established a legal precedent for the publication of controversial work with redeeming social importance.

Ferlinghetti’s paintings have been shown at various galleries around the world, from the Butler Museum of American Painting to Il Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. He has been associated with the international Fluxus movement through the Archivio Francesco Conz in Verona. He has toured Italy, giving poetry readings in Roma, Napoli, Bologna, Firenze, Milano, Verona, Brescia, Cagliari, Torino, Venezia, and Sicilia. He won the Premio Taormino in 1973, and since then has been awarded the Premio Camaiore, the Premio Flaiano, the Premio Cavour. among others. He is published in Italy by Oscar Mondadori, City Lights Italia, and Minimum Fax. He was instrumental in arranging extensive poetry tours in Italy produced by City Lights Italia in Firenze. He has translated from the italian Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Poemi Romani, which is published by City Lights Books. In San Francisco, his work can regularly be seen at the George Krevsky Gallery at 77 Geary Street.

Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind continues to be the most popular poetry book in the U.S. It has been translated into nine languages, and there are nearly 1,000,000 copies in print. The author of poetry, plays, fiction, art criticism, and essays, he has a dozen books currently in print in the U.S., and his work has been translated in many countries and in many languages. His most recent books are A Far Rockaway of the Heart (1997), How to Paint Sunlight (2001), and Americus Book I (2004) published by New Directions.

He has been the recipient of numerous prizes, including the Los Angeles Times’ Robert Kirsch Award, the BABRA Award for Lifetime Achievement, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Award for Contribution to American Arts and Letters, the American Civil Liberties Union’s Earl Warren Civil Liberties Award. Ferlinghetti was named San Francisco’s first poet laureate.

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the best-selling poetry books of all time, and, although that is no guarantee of poetic excellence—after all, Rod McKuen and Martin Farquar Tupper both sold a lot of books in their day—it is a sign that the author had his finger on the pulse of his time, that his work embodies the yearnings and anxiety of a particular age.

That is certainly true of Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind (1958). No other book so perfectly captured the zeitgeist of the ‘60’s counterculture, the optimism of the young radicals who would take this book into their hearts. Sure there were other poems, some by arguably better poets—the lyric (and ironic) Byronisms of Corso, the Shelleyan ecstasies of McClure, the prophetic lamentations of Ginsberg, the zen eclogues of Snyder—but none of the others embodied so perfectly their vision of their world: sceptical of all institutions, yet open to the experience of joy and suffering—with a painter’s eye, a mystic’s soul, and a lover’s heart.

The first third of the book, entitled “A Coney Island of the Mind,” contains a remarkable number of memorable individual passages:

Sometime during eternity/ some guys show up/ and one of them/ who shows up real late/ is a kind of carpenter/ from some square-type place/ like Galilee/… Him just hang there/ on His Tree/ looking real Petered out/ / and real cool/ and also/ according to a roundup of late world news/ from the usual unreliable sources/ real dead…

What could she say to the fantastic foolybear/ and what could she say to brother/ and what could she say/ to the cat with future feet/ and what could she say to mother…

Don’t let that horse/ eat that violin/ cried Chagall’s mother/ But he/ kept right on/ painting…

Constantly risking absurdity/ and death/ whenever he performs/ above the heads/ of his audience/ the poet like an acrobat/ climbs on rime/ to a high wire of his own making...

The last third of the book, which contains the complete text of the earlier Pictures of The Gone World (reviewed earlier by me on Goodreads) is filled with passages which are equally memorable.

I think, though, that the best section of this book is the middle section “Oral Messages,” a name Ferlinghetti gives to the loosely structured poems “conceived specifically for jazz accompaniment.” Nothing evokes the leisure, hip, casual feel of the age better than these seven poems.

I will conclude with a passage from the “oral message” entitled “I am Waiting”:

I am waiting for Tom Swift to grow up
And I am waiting
for the American Boy
to take off Beauty’s clothes
and get on top of her
and I am waiting
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting
for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder

[Theo Logos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, man! The dude’s NAME is a poem!
He would sling and he would sing images and words that buzz and hum through your head and electrify your heart.
He could drop a phrase that was a poem by itself -

In a surrealist year
of sandwichmen and sunbathers


Cat, that line right there is the Most! The rest of the poem is nearly superfluous.
Or he could give you new rhythms to old songs, fresh eyes to reveal hidden blasphemies -


Sometime during eternity
some guys show up
and one of them
who shows up real late
is a kind of carpenter
from some square-type place
like Galilee
and he starts wailing
and claiming he is hip
to who made heaven
and earth
and that the cat
who really laid it on us
is his Dad


And then, mid volume, he syncopates, with Oral Messages, poems written for experimental reading to jazz accompaniment -


I am waiting for the Second Coming
and I am waiting
for a religious revival
to sweep thru the state of Arizona
and I am waiting
for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored
and I am waiting
for them to prove
that God is really American
and I am seriously waiting
for Billy Graham and Elvis Presley
to exchange roles seriously


This is high test fuel, Baby! Vintage poetic wine as intoxicating now as when first written. Dig it!

[Ulysse · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hope I live to be a hundred
Like Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Still writing poem after poem
In cafés in the city

Not minding any one around
Oblivious of the street
A sailor’s cap upon my frown
And sandals on my feet

I hope by then I’ll have it in me
To write like a young man
Or like a dog or like a tree
Or like a garbage can

To have survived a century
Of mankind’s greatest follies
Outliving fourteen presidents
And all their crazy followers

To wake up with a serious case
Of bad lungs and old bones
To hardly recognise your face
In brand new telephones

Each day an endless list of chores
And good friends gone and lost
And on the handles of your doors
A thick layer of dust

Despite or thanks to all of this
The poems they keep on coming
There is no chance you want to miss
Your deepest woes mean something

You realise that to be young
You first had to grow old
And understand what lay beyond
Your future unforetold

Now here you sit by the seaside
Where seagulls wheel and cry
And diamond waves dance and collide
Not even knowing why

I hope I live to be a hundred
Like Lawrence Ferlinghetti
But if I don’t I won’t complain
I’ve made it far past thirty

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

RIP, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 2/23/21, at 101, one of the great poets of my youth in the late sixties and early seventies, one of the Beats who was jailed on obscenity charges in 1956 for publishing Allen Ginsberg's Howl in his Pocket Poet's Series through San Francisco's City Lights Bookstore, one of the greatest bookstores in the world, which he co-founded in 1953.

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waitin
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead. . .

This book was published in 1959 and never went out of print. Irreverent, "populist," carried around by many young people. In my undergraduate years I helped arrange to bring him to my small college to read poetry and he was terrific, sitting cross0legged on the floor and sometimes beating his bongos as he recited his and others' works. Before the reading several of us went to a Mexican restaurant in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the Alma Latina, and as he sat down he ordered two beers and two complete enchilada dinners. I thought he was fun, insightful, hilarious, wild.

Here's one poem from the book, to get the flavor of the work:

The pennycandystore beyond the El
is where I first
fell in love
with unreality
Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom
of that september afternoon
A cat upon the counter moved among
the licorice sticks
and tootsie rolls
and Oh Boy Gum

Outside the leaves were falling as they died

A wind had blown away the sun

A girl ran in
Her hair was rainy
Her breasts were breathless in the little room

Outside the leaves were falling
and they cried
Too soon! too soon!

One of Ferlinghetti's best-known and most controversial poems, “Christ Climbed Down”:

Christ Climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars

Christ Climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no gilded Christmas trees
and no tinsel Christmas trees
and no tinfoil Christmas trees
and no pink plastic Christmas trees
and no black Christmas trees
and no powderblue Christmas trees
hung with electric candles
and encircled by tin electric trains
and clever cornball relatives

Christ Climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no intrepid Bible salesman
covered the territory
in two-tone Cadillacs
and where no Sears Roebuck creches
complete with plastic babe in manger
arrived by parcel post
the babe by special delivery
and where no televised Wise Men
praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year and ran away to where
no fat handshaking stranger
in a red flannel suit
and a fake white beard
went around passing himself off
as some sort of North Pole saint
crossing the desert to Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
in a Volkswagon sled
drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer
with German names
and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts
from Saks Fifth Avenue
for everybody’s imagined Christ child

Christ Climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no Bing Crosby Carollers
groaned of a tight Christmas
and where no Radio City angels
iceskated wingless
thru a winter wonderland
into a jinglebell heaven
daily at 8:30
with Midnight Mass matinees

Christ Climbed Down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary’s womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody’s anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable
and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest
of Second Comings.

For his 100th birthday last year, he published a memoir about his growing up years in a--what else--crazy format.

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

In looking at the book page for this book, I am struck by how many people chose to include one of Ferlinghetti's poems. In my opinion, what that says is that although some of the slanguage and cultural references may be a bit dated, these poems still resonate with people, me included. I bought my copy of this book at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, sat, and read it from cover to cover. Almost everyone who reads this book will find a poem that will stay with them a long, long time.

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I too have drunk and seen
the spider

A perfect aside for a hot day after returning from holiday. I truly liked this much more than I do Ginsburg. I felt it aligning itself in step with O'Hara perhaps, a parallel solidity. As was the case with our sojourn to the Deep South I read this with an ear for Race. The time of its publication is close to when James Baldwin returned from exile, to pay his dues. (1955)

I liked Ferlinghetti's images, his reworking of Christian mythos.
The interplay with redemption and Santa Claus.
There's an urgency about being-in-a-place.
An understanding which places Baldwin and Heidegger side by side in earnest contemplation.

[Renee Alberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

my dad gave me his beat-up copy of Coney Island when i was in junior high, and showed me "11" the poem he'd recited for his forensics team when he was in high school. that poetry could be that natural, funny and defiant shocked me, and i've been hooked ever since.

this one is up there on the list of books that changed my life.

[Ken]

I feel as though I've read this before but GR says I have not read this before and God knows arguing with software is like arguing with a wife: You seldom win and there is no going to the replay.

Anyhoo, Ferlinghetti is always fun to return to and this 1958 collection is, in some ways, better than even the most famous Beat book of poesy, Howl and Other Poems (sorry, Ginsberg fans). Certainly it's better than any poetry Jack Kerouac ever wrote, though JK wasn't just kidding about being the most famous beat you'd never meet (unless you picked him up on The Road before he became as swollen as an alcoholic sausage, poor guy).

A sample poem from this book's more innocent days (those golden 50s) that sounds a lot like our more compromised days (these tin 20s):


I Am Waiting

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting
for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Second Coming
and I am waiting
for a religious revival
to sweep thru the state of Arizona
and I am waiting
for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored
and I am waiting
for them to prove
that God is really American
and I am waiting
to see God on television
piped onto church altars
if only they can find
the right channel
to tune in on
and I am waiting
for the Last Supper to be served again
with a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes
and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed
and I am anxiously waiting
for the secret of eternal life to be discovered
by an obscure general practitioner
and I am waiting
for the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting
to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and tv rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
and I am awaiting retribution
for what America did
to Tom Sawyer
and I am waiting
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting
for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
youth’s dumb green fields come back again
and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

[Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Free flying blank verse that spins the soul into a kaleidoscope. Love his work. Another one of the poets that stimulated simile and metaphor and coloring outside the lines in me.

[Granny · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the greatest influences of my teen years. Meeting and working with him in 1984 was an experience I'll never forget. Yeah, I still have my "ancient" copy of this book from the 1950's!

[Adriana Scarpin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am Waiting

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting
for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting
for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Second Coming
and I am waiting
for a religious revival
to sweep thru the state of Arizona
and I am waiting
for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored
and I am waiting
for them to prove
that God is really American
and I am waiting
to see God on television
piped onto church altars
if only they can find
the right channel
to tune in on
and I am waiting
for the Last Supper to be served again
with a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes
and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed
and I am anxiously waiting
for the secret of eternal life to be discovered
by an obscure general practitioner
and I am waiting
for the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting
to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and tv rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
and I am awaiting retribution
for what America did
to Tom Sawyer
and I am waiting
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting
for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
youth’s dumb green fields come back again
and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

[Dagio_maya · Rating 4 out of 5]

” L’occhio del poeta vedendo oscenamente
vede la superficie del mondo tondo”


Affascinante e complicato.
Ecco i due aggettivi con cui vorrei racchiudere le impressioni e sensazioni lasciatemi dalla lettura di questa silloge.

Quarantanove componimenti suddivisi in tre sezioni:

1. “Una Coney Island della mia mente”
2. “Messaggi orali”
3. Poesie da fotografie del mondo andato (1955)


Un poetare sicuramente non conforme (per quanto ne so) alle regole classiche.
La sensazione prevalente che ho avuto è stata quella di trovarmi di fronte più che altro ad un testo musicale che, sicuramente, perde molto nella sua traduzione proprio per una questione di suoni differenti.

Ho trovato complicato (-issimo) calarmi nel significato dei molti riferimenti storico/culturali.
Nomi/cose/persone/eventi più o meno palesati che sono propri della cultura statunitense e che senza le note ( e ne avrei volute anche di più!) non avrei per nulla colto il senso.

Faccio un esempio:

” Navigando nello stretto di Demos[1]
vedemmo volatili simbolici
che stridevano sopra di noi
mentre aquile ansiose planavano
ed elefanti in vasche da bagno
andavano alla deriva verso il largo superandoci
strimpellando mandolini ammaccati
e aggottando l’acqua con le orecchie in cerca della
bandiera a stelle e strisce
mentre vergini patriottiche
con papaveri di carta sul petto
mangiavano bon-bon
e correvano lungo le coste
gemendo forte rivolte a noi
e mentre ci legavamo agli alberi maestri
e ci tappavamo le orecchie con la gomma da
masticare
asini agonizzanti sui sommi colli
cantavano canzoni sommesse
e vacche spensierate volavano via
salmodiando inni ateniesi
mentre i loro escrementi si tramutavano in tulipani
ed eliocotteri da Elios
ci sorvolavano
sganciando biglietti ferroviari gratis
per la tratta Lost Angeles-Paradiso
e promettevano Libere Elezioni”

(1. «Lo stretto di Demos» non definisce un luogo geografico reale, ma fa riferimento – come si evince anche dalla presenza dell’aquila (simbolo degli Stati Uniti), dell’elefante (simbolo del Partito Repubblicano) e dell’asino (simbolo del Partito Democratico) – alla «demi-democrazia» americana. [n.d.t.])

Affascinante è l’occhio del poeta che decostruisce molta della mitologia a stelle e strisce e perfettamente coerenti in cui la critica era bisogno culturale diffuso.
Un’antiretorica dei propagandisti inneggianti al progresso sfrenato

"Siamo le stesse persone
ma ancora più lontane da casa
su autostrade a cinquanta corsie
su un continente di calcestruzzo
scandito da melliflui manifesti pubblicitari
che illustrano imbecilli illusioni di felicità"


Posizione instabile quella del poeta che osserva dall'alto convivendo sempre con il pericolo di cascare giù:


"Sempre rischiando assurdità
e morte
ogniqualvolta si esibisce
in alto sulle teste
della sua platea
il poeta come un funambolo
scala rime
fino all’altissimo filo fatto di sua mano
e in equilibrio sulla trave degli sguardi
al disopra di un mare di facce
passo passo arriva
all’altro capo del giorno
eseguendo capriole
e trucchi di prestipiedazione
e altri eccelsi istrionismi
e tutto senza prendere
niente
per quel che non può essere
Perché lui è il super-realista
che deve per forza percepire
la verità tesa
prima di prendere qualsiasi posizione o fare un passo
nel suo presunto avvicinamento
a quella piattaforma ancora più alta
dove Bellezza sta e aspetta
con gravità
di spiccare il salto che sfida la morte
E lui
omuncolo chapliniano
che forse afferrerà o forse no
quella leggiadra forma immortale
che si libra a braccia aperte nell’aria vuota
dell’esistenza"

Affascinante e complicato.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Goya's greatest scenes we seem to see
the people of the world
exactly at the moment when
they first attained the title of
'suffering humanity'

We are the same people
only further from home
on freeways fifty lanes wide
on a concrete continent
spaced with bland billboards
illustrating imbecile illusions of happiness

[Masked · Rating 4 out of 5]

the guy wrote a poem where marc chagall's mom is yelling at him.

"but he
kept right on
painting"

i love how sweet ferlinghetti's poems are. i don't think he means them to be. but they are.

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let us arise and go now
into the interior dark night
of the soul's still bowery
and find ourselves anew
where subways stall and wait
under the River.
Cross over
into full puzzlement.
South Ferry will not run forever.
They are cutting out the Bay ferries
but it is still not too late
to get lost in Oakland.
Washington has not yet toppled
from his horse.
There is still time to goose him
and go
leaving our income tax form behind
and our waterproof wristwatch with it
staggering blind after alleycats
under Brooklyn's Bridge
blown statues in baggy pants
our tincan cries and garbage voices
trailing.
Junk for sale!

[Stef · Rating 5 out of 5]

in honor of one of my favorite beat poets, i will write this review without touching the shift key

and, of course, my thumb readily on the space tab


 
 
a collection of interesting visual poetry


 don't need to snap your fingers or wear black
 
or have a set of bongos

 
fluid writing, cool fluidly throughout

 
 read over and over
 
and over
 
 
again

[Marina · Rating 4 out of 5]

'I am anxiously waiting
for the secret of eternal life to be discovered
by an obscure general practitioner
and save me forever from certain death
and I am waiting
for life to begin
and I am waiting
for the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting
to set sail for happiness"

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Throughout much of my youth I bore fealty to a single woman. In junior high it was Nancy, half a foot taller than me, she of the checked skirts. In high school and into college it was Rachel, artist, fabricator of her own clothing, the girl down the block. Nothing came of these relationships in the ordinary sense. We were friends, but the passion wasn't reciprocated. I never really expected it would be.

Rachel had a custom during my last two years of secondary school of having folks over for Constant Comment tea on her parent's front porch when the weather was good. The group was never very large as it normally only included those of us who would walk home together when classes were done. It did not include my older, political friends, some of whom were already in college. It did include some of those who were our suburb's counter-culture: pseudo-hippies, psuedo-beats, though we never used those terms, preferring "freaks" if anything.

I was loaned a copy of Ferlinghetti's poems on that porch one fine spring day shortly before graduation. Previously I'd only read a bit of Ginsberg, a poet who attracted both the artistic and the political types. Ferlinghetti was just a name to me, a representative of the older generations, a representative of the Beats.

Frankly, I wasn't much impressed, not like I had been with Ginsberg, not like I wss with the more conventional, and usually philosophic and/or romantic, poets we read in school.

I left Rachel and Park Ridge for college that late summer, staying faithful to the romantic ideal of her until another girl, a virtual stranger, contrived to impose her own romantic ideal and have her way with me. It was disappointing and I felt it an act of betrayal on my part. Rachel, presumably, was relieved.

This all comes back, incidentally, because I'm at the home of one of these old friends, the old, familial home in Park Ridge. His mother just died and I'm ostensibly helping him organize the house for potential sale. Ferlinghetti was in his room along with other memories.

[Britannie · Rating 4 out of 5]

BY LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI

In Golden Gate Park that day
a man and his wife were coming along
thru the enormous meadow
which was the meadow of the world
He was wearing green suspenders
and carrying an old beat-up flute
in one hand
while his wife had a bunch of grapes
which she kept handing out
individually
to various squirrels
as if each
were a little joke

And then the two of them came on
thru the enormous meadow
which was the meadow of the world
and then
at a very still spot where the trees dreamed
and seemed to have been waiting thru all time
for them
they sat down together on the grass
without looking at each other
and ate oranges
without looking at each other
and put the peels
in a basket which they seemed
to have brought for that purpose
without looking at each other

And then
he took his shirt and undershirt off
but kept his hat on
sideways
and without saying anything
fell asleep under it
And his wife just sat there looking
at the birds which flew about
calling to each other
in the stilly air
as if they were questioning existence
or trying to recall something forgotten

But then finally
she too lay down flat
and just lay there looking up
at nothing
yet fingering the old flute
which nobody played
and finally looking over
at him
without any particular expression
except a certain awful look
of terrible depression

[Corey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked this even better at 65 than I did at 25.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A slightly different take of mine about this book: https://thebaffler.com/latest/to-real...

Every bookish malcontent in the world gets all hot and bothered by the Beats, and that's fine, of course, but Lawrence Ferlinghetti is one of the major poets of the movement and he gets overlooked quite often.

In fact, there's a moment in this documentary I saw on him where he's at his 70th birthday or something and he's chatting with Gregory Corso. Corso's all shabby and grungy and resentful, a bitter minor voice if there ever was one, and he says something to Ferlinghetti to the effect of "Jack and Allen got famous, we didn't!" Which is of course, true, at least in a commercial sense, not to mention posterity.

Ferlinghetti nods and responds with admirable poise and grace: "I know. I don't mind."

What a classy guy. And the poems in this book are really really good. His learning and mastery of technique are there if you look for them, but his voice is broad and his meter is free. Also, compared to the guilt-ridden Kerouac and the notoriously orgiastic Ginsberg (not to mention the lurid Burroughs) Ferlinghetti is more of a man on the street, a fella you could drink absinthe with, and takes pleasure in the senses and the life force and has his political radicalism and eats it too.

Highly recommended, especially for people who are hep to the Beat jive but need to be given a wider perspective. Also the lack of pretentiousness and lyrical frankness is charming and nourishing. If you have the chance to listen to him read aloud, on a recording or youtube or something, please do so.

[Amanda Ventrudo · Rating 3 out of 5]

i’m getting too cynical for the beats

[Julietta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Accessibly poetry! What a concept! The only thing that holds me back a little from total comprehension is that "Coney Island of the Mind" was written in 1955 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti so, even though I'm quite old, I was born in 1958 afterwards.

As is often the case with poetry, there are universal themes such as Love, Sex, Death, the role of the Poet, Art, Suffering, and "Modern" Life. The author is a huge fan of poetry as spoken word. The poems are entitled with numbers and there is even a CD where he is reading his poetry, some selections with a jazz background which enhances the experience more!

Here are a few of my faves:

Excerpts from a hilarious one about religion that was accompanied by jazz and spoken in a funny voice...

5
Sometime during eternity
some guys show up
and one of them
who shows up real late
is a kind of carpenter
from some square-type place
like Galilee
and he starts wailing
and claiming he is hip
to who made heaven
and earth
and that the cat
who really laid it on us
is his Dad...
They stretch him on a Tree
to cool...

Here is another about love (deep sigh)

25
Cast up
the heart flops over
gasping "Love"

a foolish fish which tries to draw
its breath from flesh of air

And no one there to hear its death
among the sad bushes
where the world rushes by
in a blather of asphalt and delay

Ferlinghetti has been a regular in many poetry collections that I've read, so it's a delight to really delve into his work! Definitely worth your time to read things that make you go "hmm", "ah", "hahaha" or "what?"

[Steven R. Kraaijeveld · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making..." (30)

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was objectively an excellent book of poetry.

The poems 'I am Waiting' and 'Autobiography' in particular are real treasures while the poems in the rest of the collection are all relatable and many are also quite good.

I read a prose book years ago by Ferlinghetti and did not like it but I'm glad that I didn't give up on him as he is a fine poet.

5 stars

[Tentatively, Convenience · Rating 4 out of 5]

review of
Lawrence Ferlinghetti's A Coney Island of the Mind
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - November 12, 2011

Rereading A Coney Island of the Mind for what might be the 1st time in 41 yrs felt like going home again - by wch I mean that it feels like something that I'm very familiar w/ - even though I'm not. There's always the possibility that when one reads something in one's 'formative yrs' that it becomes deeply instantiated. Rereading this felt strangely comfortable - like being w/ an old friend that I can trust.

Ferlinghetti was probably the 1st 'rebel poet' I ever read. When I did so, in the early 1970s, his literateness & anti-war attitudes jived w/ my own. These days. I often feel like I live in an all-too-illiterate society (hence my enthusiasm for Goodreads' counterbalance) & reading a bk at all, esp 1 that references many other writers & artists, is ultimately what probably makes me feel like I'm in the company of friends - even though I only 'know' most or all of these people thru their works.

Goya (p9) & Morris Graves (25) & Dante (28) & Chagall (29) & Kafka (31) & Hemingway & Proust & T.S.Eliot (44) & Djuna Barnes (45), etc, etc, grace these pages as characters. What a cast! Ferlinghetti is, of course, the cofounder of City Lights bks & a publisher - as well as a writer in many forms. I can relate: I'm the cofounder of Normal's Books & a publisher & a writer in many forms. I reckon that if I ever have the opportunity to meet him (he's still alive at 92 as I write this) he wdn't have any problem recognizing many of the creative people that I frequently mention & wd probably stump me from time-to-time w/ his own extensive knowledge. If only this were the case more often!

A Coney Island of the Mind was originally published in 1958 & some of the poetry in it dates back to his 1st bk from 1955: Pictures of the Gone World. It astounds me somewhat how much I can relate to the attitude of this bk. He refers to "anarchy" in a completely friendly positive way w/o bothering to even acknowledge the substantial suppression of it in the USA of the time. Take this sentence from "Autobiography":

"I have seen Egyptian pilots in purple clouds
shopkeepers rolling up their blinds
at midday
potato salad and dandelions
at anarchist picnics."

It amused me, & seemed precocious, to read the phrase "drugged store cowboys" on p13 - knowing that a movie wd be similarly named decades later.

On p48 he mentions that the poems "Junkman's Obbligato" & "Autobiography" had been read by him w/ The Cellar Jazz Quintet & released on record. This recording is also on 2 different CDs - one w/ Kenneth Rexroth & one w/ Kenneth Patchen. There're probably people who wd find poetry read along w/ jazz to be a sad cliché of a bygone age - for me, these recordings are utterly wonderful. & reading these poems again I hear Ferlinghetti's readings in memory.

I rarely, or never, hear my poet friends mention Ferlinghetti. Is it b/c he's so much a part of the culture that there's no 'need'? After all, A Coney Island of the Mind is sd to've sold over a million copies - &, given that it's an easy read, most of those copies have probably been read. I wonder if it's more b/c he doesn't self-identify w/ the Beats - the literary superstars of the 20th century? According to his Wikipedia entry:

"Although in style and theme Ferlinghetti’s own writing is very unlike that of the original NY Beat circle, he had important associations with the Beat writers, who made City Lights Bookstore their headquarters when they were in San Francisco. He has often claimed that he was not a Beat, but a bohemian of an earlier generation."

I don't really find his writing to be "very unlike that of the original NY Beat circle" at all & find that to be a somewhat surprising statement. The poetry, at least, seems akin to Ginsberg's. Then again, it's often unclear to me who the Beats were - aside from the core circle of friends most often referenced: Burroughs, Ginsberg, Corso, McClure, Kerouac.. Many people seem to be sometimes associated w/ the Beats & sometimes not.

If Ferlinghetti's not a Beat is he a progenitor (well, no, he's a few yrs too late for that)? His "I am Waiting" (from no later than 1958) is a list poem of sorts that predates Anne Waldman's more famous "Fast Talking Woman" by 16 yrs or so. City Lights published that too. Now Waldman's one of those folks ambiguously associated w/ the Beats (she's the coeditor of the Beats at Naropa bk) although I'm told she associates herself more w/ a New York school that's not Beat. Here's a small section from "I am Waiting" that seems like a good place to end this review:

"and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy"

[Gautsho · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nüüd eesti keeles ka.
*
Lugesin ja siis kuulasin juutuubist, kuidas Ferlinghetti neid loeb ja kirjutasin vihikusse ymber luuletuse "Koer", et seda jõuluvanale ette lugeda ja siis lugesin veel korra ja kogu aeg olin yllatunud, kui hea see on ja ka sellest, et ykski raamat või värk ei olnud mind varem seda yles otsima pannud - miks seda nii kitsilt kiidetakse?

[Mick Parsons · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not reading this is UnAmerican. Really.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

In "A Coney Island of the Mind"
Ferlinghetti's poetry is totally mind blowing and unbelievably still seems quite current...A masterpiece!!

[Mind the Book · Rating 4 out of 5]

Att läsas experimentellt till (inre) jazz.
En favorit är Autobiography.

#BOTNS bokbingo: 'Has a place-name in the title'