Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a poet, publisher and political iconoclast who inspired and nurtured generations of San Francisco artists and writers from City Lights, his famed bookstore, died on Monday February 22 2021 at his home in San Francisco. He was 101. The cause was interstitial lung disease, his daughter, Julie Sasser, said. The spiritual godfather of the Beat movement, Mr. Ferlinghetti made his home base in the modest independent book haven now formally known as City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. While older and not a practitioner of their freewheeling personal style, Mr. Ferlinghetti befriended, published and championed many of the major Beat poets, among them Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Michael McClure. In 1956 his publication of Ginsberg’s most famous poem, the ribald and revolutionary “Howl,” led to Mr. Ferlinghetti’s arrest on charges of “willfully and lewdly” printing “indecent writings.” In a significant First Amendment decision, he was acquitted, and “Howl” became one of the 20th century’s best-known poems. Mr. Ferlinghetti was himself a prolific writer and he shared the Beats’ taste for political agitation. Lawrence Monsanto Ferling, the youngest of five sons born in the placid environs of Yonkers, N.Y., on March 24, 1919, in the wake of World War I. His father, an Italian immigrant who had built a small real estate business, had shortened the family name; as an adult, Lawrence would change it back. He graduated from North Carolina Chapel Hill with a degree in journalism and then served as a naval officer during World War II. After the war he enrolled in graduate school at Columbia University, where he earned a master’s degree in English literature. He received a doctorate in comparative literature from the Sorbonne. He married Selden Kirby-Smith in 1951. They had two children, Julie and Lorenzo; the marriage ended in divorce. In addition to Ms. Sasser, Mr. Ferlinghetti is survived by his son and three grandchildren.