Pictures of the Gone World

Description

Published to celebrate forty years of City Lights publishing, which began with the letterpress printing of this book in 1955. It was Lawrence Ferlinghetti's first book, and it has been reprinted twenty-one times, having never been out of print. The original edition contained the first twenty-seven poems to which the author has now added eighteen new verses. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet and founder of City Lights Books, author of A Coney Island of the Mind and Pictures of the Gone World, among numerous other books, has been drawing from life since his student days in Paris where he frequented the Academie Julien and where he did his first oil painting.

A prominent voice of the wide-open poetry movement that began in the 1950s, Lawrence Ferlinghetti has written poetry, translation, fiction, theater, art criticism, film narration and essays. Often concerned with politics and social issues, Ferlinghetti's poetry countered the literary elite's definition of art and the artist's role in the world. He is the author of A Coney Island of the Mind, America's most popular book of poetry and, most recently, Time of Useful Consciousness. He is also a lifelong painter and publisher, and the co-founder and owner of City Lights Booksellers and Publishers in San Francisco, California.