Citing his “rage for justice and profound desire to keep North Beach North Beach”, Peskin told the Guardian that he had already stopped by the tree he planted with the chef Alice Waters and others on the occasion of Ferlinghetti’s centennial in March 2019, and it was thriving. Residents of North Beach, the historically bohemian and Italian American neighborhood in San Francisco where Ferlinghetti lived, remembered him as an irascible yet down-to-earth bon vivant into his later years.Īaron Peskin, the city supervisor who represents the area, tweeted Tuesday that he would adjourn that day’s board of supervisors meeting in Ferlinghetti’s honor. “I’m pretty sure it’s a poem in Coney Island of the Mind: ‘You and me could really exist.’” Recalling his legacy in the neighborhood, she remembered a line of his that City Lights staff favor. He was signing books up until a few years ago, when he couldn’t physically do it any more.” “He answered fan mail in a very intentional way. In recent years, Ferlinghetti’s involvement had mostly become checking mail and writing postcards, she said. “I started here 25 years ago, and I was lucky enough to see him every morning when he would come in,” recalled Stacey Lewis, City Lights’ vice-president for publicity, marketing and sales. Tributes to the late poet poured in throughout the day, as news of his death spread. To be a poet at 101 is to be Lawrence Ferlinghetti.” Reciting his own work, a young poet named Scott Lord put it best: “To be a poet at 16 is to be 16. With votives, plenty of red wine, and at least one typewriter clacking out fresh verse on the sidewalk, a crowd of more than 100 people gathered to honor Ferlinghetti: published poets, personal friends, and people who simply appreciated sitting in a chair in City Lights’ Poetry Room.īecause Ferlinghetti had reached the advanced age of 101, nearly all those present to remember his spirit were from younger generations.
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