An unapologetic proponent of “poetry as insurgent art,” he was also a publisher and the owner of the celebrated San Francisco bookstore City Lights. City Nights, City Lights Poem by Robert Edmondson. Read Robert Edmondson poem:City Lights cobbled streets I always love this time. His aim was to present fresh and accessible poetry from around the world in order to create “an international, dissident ferment.” because I always remember you--in birthday candles, red ribbons, off-tune voice records, golden arches, concrete sidewalks, pedestrian lanes, the last flickers of city lights Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti (March 24, 1919 – February 22, 2021) was an American poet, painter, social activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. The City Lights staff in 1972. Every time you fall asleep past eleven, a part of me hopes you do. Many thanks and respect to City Lights, and of course to Donald Allen, for making these wonderful poems, by one of America's very greatest poets, available once again! City Lights Spotlight Series No. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the poet, publisher, and political activist, has died at 101 of interstitial lung disease. In 1955, Ferlinghetti launched City Lights Publishers with the Pocket Poets Series, extending his concept of a cultural meeting place to a larger arena. Photo: Christina Koci Hernandez , The Chronicle 19 Uche Nduka From acclaimed Nigeria-born, Brooklyn-based poet Uche Nduka, a book of love poems written with compact elegance and vivid eroticism. Two years after starting City Lights, Ferlinghetti published his own collection of poems, Pictures of the Gone World, as No 1 in the Pocket Poets series, little 4in x … Ferlinghetti and City Lights. Ferlinghetti was a reader as well as writer and he thrived bringing great poets to a wider audience. I don't know if you still read my poems or if you still think about me, about us, sometimes. In addition to Ginsberg, City Lights published classics like True Minds by Marie Ponsot, Here and Now by Denise Levertov, Gasoline by Gregory Corso, Lunch Poems by Frank O’Hara and Revolutionary Letters by Diane di Prima. He was the author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, and film narration. From his perch at City Lights, … San Francisco authorities seized copies of Ginsberg's collection "Howl and Other Poems" in 1957, published by City Lights the year before. City Lights is and was the center of the poetry world.” It is definitely the center of the Beat world, with its upstairs poetry room the closest anyone will find to the North Beach Bohemian Nirvana in literary San Francisco.