Robert Scheer SI Podcast SI: Human Rights & Civil Rights

Lawrence Ferlinghetti: A Champion for the Beats

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The poet and co-founder of famed City Lights Bookstore talks about his life and work publishing writers of the Beat Generation.
Robert Scheer sits down with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet and co-founder of famed City Lights Bookstore to talk about his life and work publishing writers of the Beat Generation.
A poetry reading with Lawrence Ferlinghetti at City Lights Books, October 24, 2007 (voxtheory)

Ninety-seven-year-old Lawrence Ferlinghetti was one of the founders of the paperback bookstore City Lights in San Francisco, as well as publisher and champion of beat poets and writers including Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. In their conversation, Ferlinghetti tells Robert Scheer how his experience as a naval officer in Japan during World War II made him an “instant pacifist.” Ferlinghetti discusses many in the Beat movement’s surprising sympathy for Fidel Castro and Cuba in spite of their socially progressive views. Despite his lifetime of work with the Beats, Ferlinghetti never considered himself one.

Credits

Guest:
Lawrence Ferlinghetti – poet, painter and liberal activist

Host:
Robert Scheer

Producers:
Joshua Scheer, Rebecca Mooney