On Poetry and City Culture, 1998 In October 1998 Lawrence Ferlinghetti became the first poet laureate of the city of San Francisco. Major Brown said he got the idea during a visit to the city of Seoul, South Korea. He had been asked when the city Poet Laureate would be giving his annual talk. A decision had to be made very fast to create the office and, as City Librarian Regina Minudri said, picking Lawrence Ferlinghetti was a no-brainer. She introduced him as a literary legend, a voice of dissent, and an internationally acclaimed writer, artist, bookseller and publisher.
Ferlinghetti is known to everybody in North Beach from his walks from his modest second floor flat to his roll-top desk in the publishing office of City Lights. On his desk he finds as many request to sign petitions as manuscripts for publication, and he obliges many and even walks on picket lines.
As this recording is broadcast again for the first time 15 years later Lawrence Ferlinghetti, now in his nineties, is active and engaged as ever. He has had major exhibitions of his paintings and drawings – including a 60 year retrospective in Rome in 2010. And he wrote ten more books since then including Americus: Part I (New Directions, 2004) Poetry as Insurgent Art (New Directions, 2007) And Time of Useful Consciousness, published in the Fall of 2012. One poem in this most recent work quotes the title of this radio show. Time of Useful Consciousness, so close to the description of civilization moving to its brink, eventually was chosen to be the title of the book. The bookstore, City Lights, that he co-founded 60 years ago, celebrated it’s birthday on June 23, 2013.
Recorded Oct. 13, 1998
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