RCB VV collage
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who died on February 22, outlived the century he helped define. In 1955, he began publishing the Pocket Poets Series of books, out of the City Lights bookstore, in San Francisco. His own verse appeared in Number One, titled Pictures of the Gone World, but it was Beat poet Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems (1956), which was fourth in the series, that landed Ferlinghetti, wearing his publisher’s hat, in court. The American Civil Liberties Union had assured Ferlinghetti that they would defend him should any objections to the drug use and sexual acts depicted in Howl arise. Ferlinghetti, who once described
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