Over The Course Of An Adventured-filled Life, Now In Its Tenth Decade, Lawrence Ferlinghetti Has Been Many Things: A Poet, Painter, Pacifist, Publisher, Courageous Defender Of Free Speech, And Owner Of San Francisco's Legendary City Lights Bookstore. Now The Man Whose A Coney Island Of The Mind Became A Generational Classic Reveals Yet Another Facet Of His Manifold Talents, Presenting Here His Travels Journals, Spanning Over Sixty Years. Selected From A Vast Trove Of Mostly Unpublished, Handwritten Notebooks, And Edited By Giada Diano And Matthew Gleeson, Writing Across The Landscape Becomes A Transformative Work Of Social, Cultural, And Literary History. Beginning With Ferlinghetti's Account Of Serving As A Commanding Officer On A Navy Sub-chaser During D-day, Writing Across The Landscape Dramatically Traverses The Latter Half Of The Twentieth Century.^ For Those Only Familiar With His Poetry, These Pages Present A Lawrence Ferlinghetti Never Before Encountered, An Elegant Prose Style And Tireless Political Activist Who Was Warning About The Excesses Of Our Ever-expensive Corporate Culture Long Before Such Thoughts Seeped Into Mainstream Consciousness. Yet First And Foremost We See An Inquisitive Wanderer Whose Firsthand Accounts Of People And Places Are Filled With Pungent Descriptions That Animate Descriptions That Animate The Landscapes And Cultures He Encounters.^ Evoking Each Journey With A Mixture Of Travelogue And Poetry As Well As His Own Hand-drawn Sketches, Ferlinghetti Adpots The Role Of An American Bard, Providing Panoramic Views Of The Cuban Revolution In Havana, 1960, And A Trip Through Haiti, Where Voodoo And Catholicism Clash In Cathedrals Filled With Ulcerous Children's Feet Running From Baron Hunger. Reminding Us That Poverty Is Not Only To Be Found Abroad, Ferlinghetti Narrates A Steinbeck-like Trip Through California's Salton Sea, A Sad Yet Exquisitely Melodic Odyssey From Motel To Motel, Experiencing The Life Between Cocktails, Between Filling Stations, Between Buses, Trains, Towns, Restaurants, Movies, Highways Leading Over Horizons To Another Rest Stop ....^ Sad Hope Of All Their Journeys To Nowhere And Back In Dark Eternity. Particularly Memorable Is His Journey Across The Trans-siberian Railway In 1967, Which Turns Into A Kafkaesque Nightmare In Which He, Lacking A Proper Visa, Is Removed From A Japan-bound Freighter And Forced Back Across The Russian Steppe To Moscow, Encountering A Countryside More Tolstoy Than Khrushchev, While Nearly Dying In The Process. Readers Are Also Treated To Glimpses Of Ezra Pound, Looking Like An Old Chinese Sage, Whom Ferlinghetti Espies In Italy, As Well As Fellow Beat Legends Allen Ginsberg And A Dyspeptic William S. Borroughs, Immured With His Cats In A Grotto-like Apartment In London. Embedded With Facsimile Manuscript Pages And An Array Of Poems, Many Never Before Published, Writing Across The Landscape Revives An Era When Political Activism Coursed Through The Land And Refashions Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Not Only As A Seminal Poet But As An Historic And Singular American Voice. -- From Dust Jacket. Machine Generated Contents Note: First Time Abroad -- Normandy Invasion (june 6, 1944) -- I.the Sixties -- Latin America (january -- February 1960) -- America! America! (march-november 1960) -- St. Thomas -- Puerto Rico (november 1960) -- Picturesque Haiti (november -- December 1960) -- Poet's Notes On Cuba (december 1960) -- New Orleans (december 8, 1960) -- Big Sur Journal (september 1967) -- Salton Sea Notes (october 1961) -- Seattle -- British Columbia (february 1962) -- France -- North Africa (may-july 1963) -- London (1963) -- Tijuana -- La Paz (january 4 -- 7, 1964) -- Los Angeles -- Fresno (january 1964) -- Nerja Journals (february -- May 1965) -- Italian Journal (june 1965) -- Andrei Voznesensky / Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1966) -- Berlin Blue Rider (february 1961) -- Russian Winter Journal (february-march 1967) -- High Noon, High Night, Salome, Arizona (october 9, 1967) -- New Mexico (october 1967) -- Santa Rita Journal (january 1968) -- Paris: May 1968 -- Lawrence Ferlinghetti ; Edited By Giada Diano And Matthew Gleeson. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 449-452) And Index.

Categories:

• Travel
  • Travel Writing