Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. Introduction by Patrick James Dunagan. A transcribed conversation between two prolific American poets. Swapping personal stories and anecdotes, Coolidge and Cherkovski offer insight into a wide range of topics including: the New York School, the San Francisco poetry scene of the 60s/70s/80s, the Language School, the Vancouver Poetry Conference, the Berkeley Poetry Conference, David Meltzer, Allen Ginsberg, John Ashbery, Charles Olson, Gertrude Stein, Philip Whalen, Charles Bukowski, Bernadette Mayer, Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston and more. Includes lengthy appendices where each poet presents some thoughts on poetics and their approaches to writing poems.
"Poet, publisher, bookseller, activist-this is the story of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the bookshop he made a landmark in San Francisco, and a life beautifully lived with writers and books. In the mid-1950s a group of San Francisco-based writers emerged as a central force in American letters. Self-styled bohemians, disillusioned with the old American dream of prosperity and conformity, they harangued these "virtues" in their writings. They became known as the Beat Generation. Their ranks included Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Gregory Corso. But the unifying force among them was an unassuming, almost painfully shy young poet named Lawrence Ferlinghetti. As owner of the now legendary City Lights Booksellers and its publishing enterprises, City Lights Publishers and its Pocket Poet Series, Ferlinghetti promoted the writings of his rebellious contemporaries, and continually looked for new talent to publish, while conducting a parallel though more personal search for self-identity through his own work. Although that search began with a lonely, unstable childhood in which he never knew his real parents, it would not become manifest until years later with the 1958 publication of his first collection of poems, A Coney Island of the Mind-that debut would go on to sell more than one million copies and become one of the bestselling and most popular books of poetry ever published. In this, the first biography ever published of Ferlinghetti (originally released in 1979), Neeli Cherkovski recreated those early years of the poet-publisher and examined the content and import of his work. Long out-of-print, this is a crucial literary document by a man who knew the legendary poet-publisher-bookseller intimately. This expanded edition of Ferlinghetti: A Life-published just one year after Ferlinghetti's passing in 2021 at the age of 101-includes a fascinating, hilarious new foreword about how the book came to be written in the late 1970s, an epilogue covering the last forty years of Ferlinghetti's life, and a personal, tender afterword about the long relationship between the author and his subject. For readers interested in American culture and how a business can make social change, this is an irresistible story of a long life very well lived"-- Provided by publisher
Inspired by D.H. Lawrence, Chekhov and Hemingway, Bukowski's writing is passionate, extreme and has attracted a cult following, while his life was as weird and wild as the tales he wrote. This collection of short stories gives an insight into the dark, dangerous lowlife of Los Angeles that Bukowski inhabited. From prostitutes to classical music, Bukowski ingeniously mixes high and low culture in his 'tales of ordinary madness'. These are angry yet tender, humorous and haunting portrayals of life in the underbelly of Los Angeles.
Neeli Cherkovski beschreibt in seiner Biographie die lebenslange Freundschaft mit Charles Bukowski, die 1963 begann. Er beleuchtet Bukowskis schwierige Kindheit, seine Erfahrungen mit Arbeit, Gefängnis und dem Schreiben als Rettung. Die überarbeitete deutsche Ausgabe erscheint anlässlich Bukowskis 100. Geburtstag.
