Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet and counterculture icon, dies at 101
Founder of the famed City Lights bookstore in San Francisco published work of emerging poets, giving voice to the Beat Generation
By Sam Whiting | San Francisco Chronicle | Feb 23, 2021
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet, publisher, painter and pivotal figure to the Beats and about every other counterculture literary movement in San Francisco, has died at 101.
Ferlinghetti died Monday evening in his second-floor walk-up apartment in North Beach, where he lived for 40 years under rent control. Cause of death was a degenerative lung condition, said Nancy Peters, co-owner and retired executive director of City Lights Booksellers and Publishers.
“It was my good fortune to have worked closely with him for more than 50 years,” Peters told The Chronicle on Tuesday. “We’ve lost a great poet and visionary. Lawrence was a legend in his time and a great San Franciscan.”
In his memory, City Lights on Columbus Avenue in North Beach was closed until 2 p.m. Tuesday, then open until its usual 8 p.m. closing time. Supervisor Aaron Peskin planned to adjourn Wednesday’s regular meeting of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in memory of Ferlinghetti.
He left behind dozens of books of verse, most prominently “A Coney Island of the Mind,” which was published in 1958 and has never gone out of print, with a million copies released in a dozen languages. His final book, a novel titled “Little Boy,” was published a week before the author’s 100th birthday. …
