Lawrence Ferlinghetti, R.I.P.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet, painter and co-founder of San Francisco's City Lights, passed away yesterday of interstitial lung disease. Ferlinghetti lived to the age of 101.

Born in Yonkers, Ferlinghetti would serve in the U.S. Navy during WWII and landed on the beaches of Normandy during D-Day, studied in New York and in Paris before making his way to San Francisco more than 70 years ago. 

While associated with the Beat Generation, Ferlinghetti did not consider himself a Beat Poet. But he would stand trial in 1957 for obscenity for selling Allen Ginsberg's Howl which depicted both drug use and homosexuality forever cementing his association. The following year, Ferlinghetti published his own collection of poetry A Coney Island of the Mind which became a bestseller - still quite an unusual feat for a poetry book. Although a national countercultural figure, Ferlinghetti was forever associated with San Francisco and City Lights and would be a fixture there accessible to the public until his health began to decline a decade ago.

I leave you with Ferlinghetti reciting the "Loud Prayer" from The Band's final concert at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom in The Last Waltz. R.I.P.