Lawrence Ferlinghetti Has Died. Here Are Seven of His Best Books.

In 1955, Ferlinghetti attended Allen Ginsberg’s now-legendary reading of “Howl” at San Francisco’s Six Gallery; the next day, he begged Ginsberg to grant him the publication rights. In 1956, he published the poem as part of his Pocket Poets Series, only for U.S. Customs to seize copies of the book’s second printing and arrest Ferlinghetti on charges of “willfully and lewdly” printing “indecent writings.” In 1957, the American Civil Liberties Union defended Ferlinghetti in municipal court, where the judge ruled that Howl was not obscene. This landmark decision paved the way for dismantling restrictive obscenity laws in the United States, allowing hitherto banned books, like Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Tropic of Cancer, to return into circulation. Howl remains arguably the best-known work of the Beat movement, living on in the American canon as a passionate and visceral work that changed the soul of the nation. 

Published in 1958, A Coney Island of the Mind is arguably Ferlinghetti’s best-known work, with City Lights reporting that more than one million copies have been printed. The landmark collection contains some of Ferlinghetti’s best-loved poems, including “I Am Waiting” and “Junkman’s Obliggato.” Written in the conservative post-war period, A Coney Island of the Mind’s animating force is a joyful spirit of counterculture, showcasing Ferlinghetti’s sense of romance and optimism. Bob Dylan, a fan of the collection, called Ferlinghetti “a brave man and a brave poet.”

This sequel to A Coney Island of the Mind was written 40 years later in what Ferlinghetti called “a poetry seizure” that lasted over a year. In 101 poems, Ferlinghetti muses on such diverse subjects as love, music, art, literature, history, and geography, all of it haunted by stirring images of the twentieth century on its way out the door. In these pages, Ferlinghetti goes toe to toe with the modernist pretensions of Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, questioning his own predilections about structure and technique by contrast. A Far Rockaway of the Heart is among Ferlinghetti’s most introspective works, looming large in the Ferlinghetti canon as a portrait of the poet in late life self-discovery. 

Published by Ferlinghetti as the nineteenth entry in the Pocket Poets Series in 1964, Lunch Poems is widely considered to be Frank O’Hara’s most accomplished work, containing such beloved poems as “Ave Maria” and “The Day Lady Died.” At once a cultural artifact of mid-twentieth century America and an ageless collection about the small miracles of personal connection, Lunch Poems brims with transcendent intimacy. In “Personal Poem,” O’Hara muses, “I wonder if one person out of 8,000,000 is thinking of me.” Thanks in no small part to Ferlinghetti, who tirelessly badgered O’Hara to finish the project, Lunch Poems remains an essential read thought about by many.

“Poetry is the shortest distance between two humans,” Ferlinghetti writes in Poetry as Insurgent Art. In this collection, constructed from decades of remarks collected beginning in the late 1950s, Ferlinghetti explores his vision of poetry as an accelerant of activism and an engine of political change. At once a populist manifesto and a personal meditation on art, this collection describes a world in need of saving, and exalts poetry as the one medium with the power to unite us all.

In this explosive, genre-defying tome, Ferlinghetti excavates his turbulent childhood and his service in the Navy during World War II, as well as his bohemian youth in New York City, Paris, and San Francisco. Part memoir, part autofiction, and part prose poem explosion, everything that made Ferlinghetti Ferlinghetti is contained within this inimitable work. Dreamlike and daffy, it takes the form of the red-hot streak of Ferlinghetti’s consciousness, manifested in everything from triumphant reflections on art to uproarious scenes from his misbegotten youth. It’s as comprehensive a depiction of the American Century as money can buy.

New to Ferlinghetti? Start your journey into his prolific catalogue with Ferlinghetti’s Greatest Poems, a comprehensive anthology published toward the end of his life, which includes works both new and old. It held a special place in Ferlinghetti’s heart; as he once said, “My newest poems are always my favorite poems.”