Printer's ink is the greater explosive. —Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti founded the City Lights publishing house sixty years ago in 1955, launching the press with his now legendary Pocket Poets Series. First in the series wasPictures of the Gone World—and within a year, he had brought out two more volumes, translations by Kenneth Rexroth and then, poems by Kenneth Patchen. But it was the success and scandal of Number Four,Howl & Other Poemsby Allen Ginsberg (1956), that put City Lights on the map, positioning the Pocket Poets Series at the forefront of the literary counterculture.
A landmark sixtieth retrospective celebrating 60 years of publishing and cultural history, this edition provides an invaluable distillation of the energetic, iconoclastic and still fresh body of work represented in the ongoing series. Ferlinghetti has selected a handful of poems from each of the sixty volumes, including the work of Ginsberg, Kerouac, Corso, Pasolini, Voznesensky, Prévert, Mayakovsky, Cortázar, O'Hara, Ponsot, Levertov, di Prima, Duncan, Lamantia, Lowry, and more, all of the Pocket Poets Series' innovative, influential, and often ground-breaking American and international poets.
US
San Francisco, CA; New York, NY
A comprehensive selection from Ferlinghetti's famed City Lights Pocket Poets Series, published on the 60th anniversary of its founding.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet and founder of City Lights Booksellers and Publishers, is the author of A Coney Island of the Mind and Pictures of the Gone World, among numerous other books, and the publisher of the famed Pocket Poets Series, among many other titles at his City Lights press.
Inspired by the French poetry series, Po?tes d'aujourd'hui, Lawrence Ferlinghetti launched the Pocket Poets Series in 1955 with his own Pictures of the Gone World. The success and scandal of Number Four, Howl & Other Poems (l“%
![City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology: 60th Anniversary Edition [Hardcover]](/itemImage/2/9/8/3/2_92547.jpg "City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology: 60th Anniversary Edition [Hardcover]")