Ferlinghetti Day is Coming for You!
Unfettered by physical boundaries, poetic spirit moves online
I first saw Urban Forester Chris Buck banging a large Celtic drum on the corner of Broadway and Columbus while a white-bearded friend in a black beret declaimed from a book of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poetry. It didn’t seem unusual at the time.
It was March 24, 2019 — the 100th birthday of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, founder of City Lights Bookstore and San Francisco’s first poet laureate, and his poetry was being read throughout North Beach: outside Caffe Trieste, inside City Lights, and on this particularly vibrant street corner, beneath the sculpture of flying books, atop the swirl of words they dropped on the pavement.
I stopped to listen, enthralled, caught up in the excitement of the moment, having stumbled onto the events without knowing of their existence, and learned that Buck wasn’t merely a member of the multitude out to celebrate Ferlinghetti’s centennial, but a third-time celebrant on a personal mission to establish a new holiday in San Francisco and beyond: Ferlinghetti Day.