Poet, playwright, publisher, and activist Lawrence Ferlinghetti was born Lawrence Monsanto Ferling on March 24, 1919 in Yonkers, New York. Ferlinghetti’s most famous collection,
A Coney Island of the Mind (1958)
, has sold well over one million copies in America and abroad. He was the author of over 30 other collections of poetry, including
Time of Useful Consciousness (2012),
Poetry as Insurgent Art (2005),
San Francisco Poems (2001),
How to Paint Sunlight: Lyric Poems and Others, 1997–
2000,
A Far Rockaway of the Heart (1997),
These Are My Rivers: New and Selected Poems, 1955–
1993, and
Endless Life: Selected Poems (1981). Ferlinghetti’s numerous awards and honors included the National Book Critics Circle’s Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the Robert Frost Memorial Medal, and the National Book Foundation’s Literarian Award, among others. (
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