Born in Bronxville, New York, in 1919, Lawrence Ferlinghetti is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the cofounder of San Francisco's hallowed City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. He lives in San Francisco. Giada Diano is Lawrence Ferlinghetti's translator and biographer in Italy. Her biography is published by Feltrinelli (Milan). Matthew Gleeson is a writer and editor who has spent over a decade with City Lights Booksellers & Publishers.
If you happened not to be in the back seat when Neal Cassady was bombing across the country on two-lane blacktop, and you missed catching a ride on Kesey's swirling bus, don't worry... To turn these pages is to look over Ferlinghetti's should as he composes his journals and to be in on the sound of his distinctive, rhythmic, low-slung voice. -- Billy Collins Lawrence Ferlinghetti is one of the legendary spirits of the Beat Generation, but his writings span the decades and now they span the globe. These sketches of some sixty years' travels, composed on the run, are Ferlinghett's song of the open road, with all the immediacy and tenderness of his beloved landmark poems. -- Sean Wilentz, author of The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln [T]his fresh treasure of a book reveals one of the most vivid, soulful, evocative and richly cultured travelers of our time. Here are accounts of Morocco and Mexico-of Los Angeles and the outlines of Heaven and Hell-as wide-awake and invigorating at those of a D.H. Lawrence. Here, too, are some of the sources of the rigorous, original poetry that has already sustained so many generations. -- Pico Iyer This wide-flung embrace of a collection of travel diaries and new poems will amuse, astonish, disturb, and restore its readers with its deliciously detailed and unsparing compassion. Ferlinghetti is perhaps the last truly brave writer at work in the US today. -- Ann Douglas, Parr Professor Emerita of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University