Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti was born in 1919. On March 24, 2018 he turned 99 years old. Today’s show is a celebration of Ferlinghetti’s career and of his new book from New Directions, Ferlinghetti’s Greatest Poems, edited by Nancy J. Peters. This is a rebroadcast of the second half of an interview Jack Foley did with Lawrence Ferlinghetti on April 21, 1994. The interview took place at City Lights and in it Ferlinghetti candidly discusses his entire career.


Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti was born in 1919. On March 24, 2018 he turned 99 years old. Jack’s next two shows are a celebration of Ferlinghetti’s career and of his new book from New Directions, Ferlinghetti’s Greatest Poems, edited by Nancy J. Peters. The back cover reads, “In 1953 Lawrence Ferlinghetti cofounded City Lights, the first paperback bookstore in the United States, a Mecca for millions. His Coney Island of the Mind is one of the best-selling volumes of poetry by any living American poet. Born in Yonkers, New York, in 1919, Ferlinghetti has received the Robert Frost Memorial Medal and the first Literarian Award of the National Book Foundation.” It has blurbs from Bob Dylan (“A brave man and a brave poet”) and Francis Ford Coppola (“Lawrence gets you laughing then hits you with the truth”). These two shows are a rebroadcast of an interview Jack Foley did with Lawrence Ferlinghetti on January 3, 1990. The interview took place at City Lights and in it Ferlinghetti candidly discusses his entire career.