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To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Howl and Other Poems, with nearly one million copies in print, City Lights presents the story of editing, publishing and defending Allen Ginsberg’s landmark poem within a broader context of obscenity issues and censorship of literary works. This collection begins with an introduction by publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who shares his memories of hearing Howl first read at the 6 Gallery, of his arrest and of the subsequent legal defense of Howl’s publication. Never-before-published correspondence of Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Kerouac, Gregory Corso, John Hollander, Richard Eberhart and others provides an in-depth commentary on the poem’s ethical intent ...
Reclaiming San Francisco is an anthology of fresh appraisals of the contrarian spirit of the city-a spirit "resistant to authority or control." The official story of San Francisco is one of progress, development, and growth. But there are other, unofficial, San Francisco stories, often shrouded in myth and in danger of being forgotten, and they are told here: stories of immigrants and minorities, sailors and waterfront workers, and poets, artists, and neighborhood activists-along with the stories of speculators, land-grabbers, and the land itself that need to be told differently. Contributors include historians, geographers, poets, novelists, artists, art historians, photographers, journalists, citizen activists, an architect, and an anthropologist. Passionate about the city, they want San Francisco to be more itself and less like the city of office towers, chain stores, theme parks, and privatized public services and property that appears to be its immediate fate. San Francisco is not alone in being transformed according to the dictates of the global economy. But San Franciscans are unusual in their readiness to confront the corporate agenda for their city.
With Reading the Obscene, Jordan Carroll reveals new insights about the editors who fought the most famous anti-censorship battles of the twentieth century. While many critics have interpreted obscenity as a form of populist protest, Reading the Obscene shows that the editors who worked to dismantle censorship often catered to elite audiences composed primarily of white men in the professional-managerial class. As Carroll argues, transgressive editors, such as H. L. Mencken at the Smart Set and the American Mercury, William Gaines and Al Feldstein at EC Comics, Hugh Hefner at Playboy, Lawrence Ferlinghetti at City Lights Books, and Barney Rosset at Grove Press, taught their readers to approa...
An entertaining read as well as a practical walking (and driving) tour, this guide covers the entire Bay Area, and comes with an introduction by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
"Maisel has a wonderful voice and A Writer's San Francisco reads like a gritty, fluent love letter. He moves seamlessly between thoughtful descriptions of modern San Francisco and the San Francisco of the '60s and '70s in narratives that bring the city alive on the page. His affection and respect for the city are inspiring to all writers and artists, but also to anyone who has ever spent time in San Francisco and fallen in love with her." — Chris DeLorenzo, Laguna Writers Workshop San Francisco holds a special place in the history of American literature and in the hearts of creative people everywhere. In thirty-one essays, Eric Maisel takes you on an enchanted journey through one of the wo...
Political essays and poems. In Young People Are Different, he writes: "Hostage in their homes, / kept alive by the telephone / fully animated only when taking flight / in rough formation. / They rebel / so better to submit / to their totalitarian peerage."
'Art of Engagement' focuses on the key role of California's art and artists in politics and culture since 1945. The book showcases many types of media, including photographs, found objects, drawings and prints, murals, painting, sculpture, ceramics, installations, performance art, and collage.
An illustrated, in-depth examintion of the avant-garde and politically radical Latino art of San Francisco's Mission District In The Heart of the Mission, Cary Cordova combines urban, political, and art history to examine how the Mission District, a longtime bohemian enclave in San Francisco, has served as an important place for an influential and largely ignored Latino arts movement from the 1960s to the present. Well before the anointment of the "Mission School" by art-world arbiters at the dawn of the twenty-first century, Latino artists, writers, poets, playwrights, performers, and filmmakers made the Mission their home and their muse. The Mission, home to Chileans, Cubans, Guatemalans, ...
This scholarly close reading of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" considers the iconic poem through a four-part trickster framework: appetite, boundlessness, transformative power and a proclivity for setting and falling victim to tricks and traps. The book pursues various different narratives of the trickster Coyote and the historical and biographical contexts of "Howl" from a truly interdisciplinary perspective. This study seeks to contribute to the current literature on the poetry of the Beats and of Allen Ginsberg, specifically his "Howl," and the ways it continues to expand in meaning, depth and significance today.