Beat Generation Gallery
LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI IN CITY LIGHTS
San Francisco 1965
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is a Beat poet, artist and owner/publisher of City Lights Books (the first soft cover book store in the US). He was San Francisco's first Poet Laureate. These photographs were taken in the basement of City Lights. Ferlinghetti told me that City Lights used to be a Holy Roller church and that he had left up the Biblical tracts on the walls.
LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI / I AM THE DOOR, CITY LIGHTS BOOKS
San Francisco 1965
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is a Beat poet, artist and owner/publisher of City Lights Books (the first soft cover book store in the US). He was the first Poet Laureate of San Francisco. This photograph was taken in the basement of City Lights. Ferlinghetti told me that City Lights used to be a Holy Roller church and that he had left up the Biblical tracts on the walls. While posing for me in front of 'I Am the Door' Ferlinghetti pulled his coat up to reveal the 'door'.
LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI, BUSINESSMAN
San Francisco 1965
I followed Lawrence around his bookstore, City Lights, one day, noting his attention to detail. He did everything in the bookshop, no job too big or too small. I asked him how he handled being a Beat poet and bookstore owner. He told me that when he comes to work at the store he is all business. Besides, he never considered himself a Beat poet but rather a painter. I am still knocked out by this news because he has the best selling poetry book in the world with his book,
A Coney Island of the Mind.
