RIP Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919 – 2021)

[March 24, 1919 – February 22, 2021]

Lawrence Ferlinghetti died on Monday 22nd February 2021 at his home in San Francisco. He was 101 years old…

Dear Lawrence

I heard of your passing yesterday morning at the age of 101 in San Francisco, your home for many years. And I had to put words to paper and write a letter to you. In some ways it’s too late as you have passed from this life, but surely it is never too late to give thanks.

I was at university here in the city of Liverpool when a module I was studying on modern poetry covered two wonderful volumes of poems – Alan Ginsberg’s “Howl” and Frank O’Hara’s “Lunch Poems”. Both volumes were published by City Lights Books. I had no idea at the time that you, Lawrence, were the guiding light behind this publishing venture and the bookshop in San Francisco. Fast forward several decades to 2015 and I am on our honeymoon with June, we find City Lights Books and this becomes the pilgrimage. I blurt out some nonsense to the book seller behind the counter about being on a homage to the shop. She must hear this so often and is patient and polite. I read more about you, Lawrence, and discover that you live locally and still visit the bookshop, now in your 90s. I buy a couple of your poetry collections and am blown away by the beauty of your work.

But the pilgrimage was not complete on this fleeting visit. We return to San Francisco, this time with my youngest son, Theo the following year. The shop brings more stirrings of inspiration and awe. And after a while in the shop, we find a café just off Columbus Avenue and see from the photos on the wall that this was a meeting place for Beat Poets. I am looking around now, wondering which table you would have sat at.

Your work over the years: your own writings; the publishing press; the radical causes you supported; the charitable work that you inspired – all of this as the legacy that you left. What a remarkable legacy it was. You fought with colleagues the court case on obscenity charges when Ginsberg’s “Howl” was published (and won the case!) And over the years you were always the guiding light, encouraging radicalism and the fight in a country where that was never easy.

In the last couple of years, I honoured your 100th birthday. That was some milestone. Then, when COVID swept round the globe last year we were amongst the many who responded to the appeal for funds to keep the shop going. It’s still there, still thriving, but there will be an emptiness for you absence. Thank you for your own particular ‘dint’ on the world.

With love and thanks

Stuart

Here’s a poem I wrote in 2017 for Lawrence, which was included in my last published collection “Hang Fire“:

Ageing Buildings

(for Lawrence Ferlinghetti)

Use an old idea, said the music maker
turn it inside out
And pretend it doesn’t belong to you,
wait for the trickle of tiny droplets.

Observe every ageing building, capture the photo
as each day passes, wait to take again
when the project is complete and
everyone has forgotten the step by step, the rot.

Liberation comes through repetition, through repetition,
through the holes in the wall,
Left by the design work that led to this
open book, a watch-word for beauty.

Every step of this city, every street name and place
as a piece of folklore
Someone waiting to tell me
what the keys to the door look like.

… and then, with a catch of the breath, a wetness of the eyes
and my imagination leaps away, into meanings beyond words.

Also published on Medium.