March 25, 2019

Yesterday, March 24, the American poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti celebrated his 100th birthday. Ferlinghetti is best known as a leader of the Beat movement of the 1950′s. The Beats were writers who rejected commercialism and middle-class American values. A birthday party for the centenarian (100-year-old) poet was held yesterday at City Lights, the famous San Francisco bookstore that Ferlinghetti co-founded in 1953. The city of San Francisco marked his birthday by declaring March 24 “Lawrence Ferlinghetti Day.”

The famed American poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti turned 100 years old on March 24, 2019. Credit: © Robert Altman, Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti was born in Yonkers, New York, in 1919. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1941 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. After serving in the United States Navy during World War II (1939-1945), he earned a master’s degree in literature from Columbia University in 1947 and a doctorate in literature from the Sorbonne in Paris, France, in 1950.

When he returned to the United States, Ferlinghetti settled in San Francisco. There, in 1953, he and a friend, Peter Martin, established the City Lights bookstore. The store became a gathering place for Beat and avant-garde (experimental) writers and artists. In 1955, Ferlinghetti started a publishing company, also called City Lights. He published his own first volume of poetry, Pictures of the Gone World (1955), as well as works by Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Kenneth Rexroth, and other writers. Ferlinghetti’s most famous poetry collection, A Coney Island of the Mind (1958), is a satiric criticism of American culture.

Ferlinghetti writes in colloquial free verse. His poetry describes the need to release literature and life from conformity and timidity. He believes Zen Buddhism and love can open the soul to truth and beauty. Aside from numerous volumes of poetry, Ferlinghetti has also written literary criticism, novels, plays, travelogues, and the 2019 autobiographical prose poem Little Boy. He is also known for his paintings and his support for liberal political and social causes.