Lawrence Ferlinghetti
born March 24, 1919, is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co – founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. Author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, and film narration, he is best known for A Coney Island of the Mind (New York: New Directions, 1958), a collection of poems that has been translated into nine languages, with sales of over one million copies and continues to be the most popular poetry book in the U.S. His paintings have been shown at various galleries around the world and can be seen regularly at the George Krevsky Gallery in San Francisco. His most recent books are A Far Rockaway of the Heart (1997), How to Paint Sunlight (2001), and Americus Book I (2004) published by New Directions. In 2003 he was awarded the Robert Frost Memorial Medal, the Author’s Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, and he was elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Diane di Prima
born in Brooklyn, New York, she is, undeniably, the most well – known female Beat poet. She attended Swarthmore College, then moved to Greenwich Village to become part of the Bohemian intellectual culture. She is the author of 43 books of poetry and prose. Loba: Books I & II was published in the Penguin Poets Series in August 1998. Her autobiographical memoir, Recollections of My Life as a Woman, was published by Viking in April 2001. Recent poetry chapbooks include Towers Down (with Clive Matson), published by Eidolon Editions in 2002; The Ones I Used to Laugh With, Habenicht Press, San Francisco, 2003, and TimeBomb, Eidolon Editions 2006. Her work has been translated into over 20 languages. She has received writing grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, an Award for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry from the National Poetry Association, and an honorary doctorate from St. Lawrence University. In 2002, she was one of three finalists to be named the first Poet Laureate of California. She has taught poetry and spirituality courses at New College of California, California College of Arts and Crafts, and the San Francisco Art Institute. She has lived in San Francisco since 1968 where, in 2009, she was named Poet Laureate.
Night Streets Crystal
by Ron Loewinsohn
The streets at night
Run broad and bright
deep into the heart
where they take me to myself.
The streets at night
Are filled with light
And form a crystal
Where my love lives.
The trees at night
Line the streets
Like a green smoke
At the edges of thought.
The night in the trees’ branches
Has a thousand crystals
Where my love lives.
The branches of the tree of night
Are the streets of the dark crystal
That take me to myself. The magic of
The streets at night is the crystal
They make, broad and bright,
As I drive home away from you,
Yet in the green smoke
At the edges of thought,
In the night filled with trees,
In the streets filled with night,
The incantation of you
Creates a crystal
Wherein “Far” is measured
In the hours since I’ve seen you,
And “Near” in the beat of your heart.
Zero: The Fool
by Ron Loewinsohn
His sky is the same yellow as his boots,
which appear to be thin and ill – suited for
the craggy heights where he dances
without care.
His sun is only a quarter sun, its rays
cartoon-like. The jagged Alps in the distance
behind him look like fangs, but the mountains
below those fangs are blue, and might be
little more than dream – Alps. His little
dog must think it queer to dance like this
on a cliff so sheer.
I’ve always thought of this card as
my card, but the youth only blesses,
his arms outstretched: his world, his orchestra,
and he, exhorting it to the inevitable
cadenza that awaits him just beyond
this moment on the card.
His number is zero:
the 1 that counts for nothing.