Synopses & Reviews
New Directions is proud to announce a riveting and galvanizing new book by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. At ninety-three, he shows more power than most any other poet at work today. Ferlinghetti describes his new book, , as "a fragmented recording of the American stream-of-consciousness, always westward streaming; a people's poetic history in the tradition of William Carlos Williams' , Charles Olson's , Allen Ginsberg's , and Ed Sanders' . 'Time of Useful Consciousness, is an aeronautical term denoting the time between when one loses oxygen and when one passes out, the brief time in which some life-saving action is possible."Ferlinghetti's first book since Poetry as Insurgent Art, the fierce and immediate presents poetry written "in ways that those who see poetry as the province of the few and educated had never imagined" ().
Review
"His poems burn through modern America's absurdities and unrepentant historical revision in a glorious rant against mediocrity, greed, capitalism and boring poetry." Publishers Weekly
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"Lawrence Ferlinghetti is a national treasure and the kind of poet laureate we really deserve." CounterPunch
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"In the spirit of Whitman, [Ferlinghetti] unwinds a country in all its speed and vibrancy." San Francisco Chronicle
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"San Francisco's first poet laureate and its most lyrical town crier." San Francisco Chronicle
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"Lawrence Ferlinghetti's engrossing new work, , is an ode to modern American myth. At ninety-two, Ferlinghetti has rhythm, he has vision, and he captures the magic energy of Jack Kerouac." The Coffin Factory
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" is a fresh missive from an elderly Beat who has always refused to sit down." Truthdig
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"Ferlinghetti refers to Ginsberg as 'the Whitman of our age,' but has that epic, galvanizing, country-hopping voice of a latter-day Good Gray as Ferlinghetti recreates the pioneer spirit of racing west for gold, for freedom, for art, for land, for the hell of it, for life--as well as all the messy stops along the way." Christopher Bollen
Synopsis
Lawrence Ferlinghetti's first book since , a new call to action and a vivid picture of civilization moving towards its brink.
About the Author
Lawrence Ferlinghetti was born in Yonkers, New York, in 1919. After receiving an A.B. degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina, an M.A. from Columbia University, and a stint in the Navy during World War II, and after working in the mail room at Time Magazine and living in Paris where he received a Doctorat de l'Universite from the Sorbonne, Ferlinghetti eventually settled in San Francisco, where he and Peter D. Martin founded the first all-paperback bookstore in the country, City Lights Books. Besides being named San Francisco's first poet laureate, he has received The Before Columbus Foundation "Lifetime Achievement Award." Most recently he has also been writing a weekly column, "Poetry as News," for the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review.