#City Lights Books

[garadinervi]

Mosab Abu-Toha, Displaced (In memory of Edward Said), in Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza, City Lights Books, San Francisco, CA, 2022 (ebook here)

Displaced In memory of Edward Said I am neither in nor out. I am in between. I am not part of anything. I am a shadow of something. At best, I am a thing that does not really exist. I am weightless, a speck of time in Gaza. But I will remain where I am.

[davidhudson]

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, March 24, 1919 – February 22, 2021.

[allthedesiredusernamesaretaken]

... endless amount of knowledge ...

📷Fred Lyon - San Francisco

[factorygroupie]

City Lights Bookstore

[libriaco]

I battuti

Scrive l'autore nella sua prefazione:

If any city in American deserves the title of home of the Beat Generation, it is San Francisco. Although New York can rightly boast to be the birthplace of the Beats, the literary group came to maturity and national prominence in this most beautiful city by the bay. In the 1950s San Francisco was a magnet attracting inventive writers, artists, and thinkers during the conservative postwar years. Intellectual freedom blossomed with the publication and trial of “Howl” and by the 1960s, San Francisco was the destination of choice for a new generation of radical innovators.

La foto di copertina, di Larry Keenan, scattata davanti al City Lights Bookstore, è del 1965 e comparve anche sulla copertina del numero tre del City Lights Journal che uscì con data 1° gennaio 1966. Lawrence (aka Lorenzo) Ferlinghetti voleva documentare la scena Beat di San Francisco con lo stesso spirito delle classiche foto degli artisti e scrittori bohémien di Parigi agli inizi del '900. I Beat: fila in basso da sinistra a destra: Robert LaVigne, Shig Murao, Larry Fagin, Leland Meyezove (sdraiato), Lew Welch, Peter Orlovsky. Seconda fila: David Meltzer, Michael McClure, Allen Ginsberg, Daniel Langton, Steve (?), Richard Brautigan, Gary Goodrow (a metà). Dietro: Stella Levy e Lawrence Ferlinghetti che col suo ombrello della casa editrice City Lights Books protegge tutto il gruppo.

B. Morgan, The beat generation in San Francisco. A literary tour, San Francisco, City Lights Books, 2003

[secret-restaurant-press]

[sheshallfromtimetotime]

City Lights is offering a free ebook download of Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha's book, Things You May Find Hidden In My Ear. I just finished reading it and it's very good. You should probably read it, too.

[lascitasdelashoras]

Brady Harris - City Lights Books, San Francisco

[maa-pix2]

Free the Press City Lights Bookstore, San Francisco August 2023

[uwmspeccoll]

On this date, October 3 in 1957, the California State Superior Court ruled that the book Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsburg was not obscene. High in the pantheon of American literature and an icon of the Beat Generation, Ginsburg started working on Howl in 1954. It was first published in 1956 by Beat poet and San Francisco bookstore owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti through his City Lights Books imprint. Containing many references to sex and drugs, the publication was seized, deemed obscene, and Ferlinghetti and his bookstore manager Shig Murao were arrested and brought to trial. The trial was widely publicized, and Ferlinghetti won the case with the help of the ACLU, with California State Superior Court Judge Clayton Horn declaring that the poem was of "redeeming social importance."

Shown here are the title page to the 8th 1959 printing of the City Lights 1st edition; the title page, signed by Ginsburg, and opening lines from the 1971 Grabhorn-Hoyem limited-edition printing of 275 copies on handmade paper; and the cover for the 2010 graphic novel version with illustrations by American graphic artist Eric Drooker, published by Harper Perennial, which were originally created as animation for the 2010 movie Howl. The image of Ginsburg working on the Howl manuscript in 1955 is from Drooker’s graphic novel.

View other Milestone Monday posts.

[razorsadness]

and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset, crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye— corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face, soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sun- rays obliterated on its hairy head like a dried wire spiderweb, leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures from the sawdust root, broke pieces of plaster fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear, Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O my soul, I loved you then!

—Allen Ginsberg, from "Sunflower Sutra" (Howl & Other Poems, City Lights Books, 1956)

[garadinervi]

Diane di Prima, b. August 6, 1934 / 2024

(image: Diane di Prima. City Lights Booksellers & Publishers, San Francisco, CA)

[michaelwarr-creativework]

Chun Yu and I read a few of our Two Languages / One Community poems in Chinese and English to close the 70th Anniversary of City Lights Bookstore on Sunday, August 20th, in Jack Kerouac Alley. The list of stellar poets and musicians follows below.

From City Lights:

Thank you to all the poets and attendees who turned out to help us celebrate our 70th anniversary with a live poetry reading in Kerouac Alley!

This star-studded event featured readings by Micah Ballard, Chris Carosi, Garrett Caples, Neeli Cherkovski, Norma Cole, Gillian Conoley, Sophia Dahlin, Tiff Dressen, Nadia Elbgal, Agneta Falk Hirschman, erica lewis, Randall Mann, Alexandra Mattraw, Alejandro Murguía, Achy Obejas, Julien Poirier, Sam Sax, Janaka Stucky, Tate Swindell, Sunnylyn Thibodeaux, Preeti Vangani, Michael Warr, and Chun Yu.

City Lights is celebrating our 70th anniversary all year long with historic talks, poetry readings, online panels and discussions, and much more!

Details: https://citylights.com/city-lights-70th-anniversary.../

[learnelle]

Obsessed with this bookshop-cinema hybrid in Florence! During the day you can even sit upstairs and watch people choose their books downstairs 💛

[oatzmeal]

iced coffee runs through my veins during finals week

[peacefulandcozy]

Instagram credit: chaptersofshau