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Chapters: Jenna Jameson, Don Delillo, Mario Puzo, Camille Paglia, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Alan Alda, Marilyn Vos Savant, Lee Iacocca, Paul Gallico, Gregory Corso, John Ciardi, Roland Merullo, Raymond Lotta, Karen Tintori, Charlie Gasparino, John Fante, Evan Hunter, John Giorno, Victor Di Suvero, Neil Cavuto, Anna Quindlen, Kate Dicamillo, Arthur F. Carmazzi, Alan Pizzarelli, Albert Innaurato, Mary Doria Russell, Vito Russo, Tiziano Thomas Dossena, Frank Judge, Leo Buscaglia, Richard Russo, Joseph Petracca, Frank Messina, Helen Barolini, Pietro Di Donato, Frank Bruni, Nicholas Pileggi, Gerald Di Pego, Jerre Mangione, Lisa Scottoline, Michele Pane, Charlie Viracola, Anthony Piccione, Steve Martini, Joseph Rocchietti, Anna Monardo, Mike "The Godfather" Clemente. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 265. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Jenna Jameson (born Jenna Marie Massoli on April 9, 1974) is an American entrepreneur and former pornographic actress, who has been called the world's most famous porn performer and "The Queen of Porn." She started acting in erotic films in 1993 after having worked as a stripper and glamor model. By 1996, she had won the "top newcomer" award from each of the three major pornographic film-industry organizations. She has since won more than 20 adult film awards, and has been inducted into both the X-Rated Critics Organization (XRCO) and Adult Video News (AVN) Halls of Fame. Jameson founded the pornographic entertainment company ClubJenna in 2000 with Jay Grdina, whom she later married and divorced. Initially a single website, this business expanded into managing similar websites of other stars and began producing pornographic videos in 2001. The first such movie, Briana Loves Jenna (with Briana Banks), was named at the 2003 AVN Awards as the best-selling and be...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=74573 ... Read more

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti Live at The Poetry Center, recorded October 17, 2002 at The Poetry Center, Ballroom of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Ferlinghetti narrates to following poems: Blind Poet, Baseball Canto, Driving a Cardboard Automobile Without A License, #12, #25, #28, The Art World, Oh You Gatherer, How to Paint Sunlight, Yachts in Sun, from Big Sur Light, Dictionaries of Light, Library Scene Manhattan, Dirty Tongue, Blood of the Bag Lady, The Freights, Over the High Sierras, Into the Interior, Allen Ginsberg Dying, Oracle at Delphi, History of the Airplane, Are There Not Still Fireflies ... Read more

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LITERARY SAN FRANCISCO surveys, in photographs and incisive commentary, the literary greats and eccentric dreamers who lived in or left their mark on the city. Here is the full sweep of its literary history, from the California Indian oral tradition and the brawling frontier, thought the insurgent counterculture, to today's continuing San Francisco renaissance. The authors distill the essence of San Francisco's literary life and its relation to the larger American scene.

CONTENTS: Intro * Part One: Beginnings (Costanoan Indians through 1910) * Part Two: The 20th Century * Afterword ... Read more

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Many of the seminal figures of contemporary culture knew and worked with Allen Ginsberg and have a place in this book. Among them are Cecil Taylor, David Amram, Philip Glass, Ray Manzarek, Ed Sanders, Czeslaw Milosz, Norman Mailer, Robert Frank, Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, Gregory Corso, William Burroughs, Philip Whalen, Peter Orlovsky, and Robert Creeley. In this book we truly see Allen Ginsberg as a poet, a spiritualist, a friend, a lover, a performer, a teacher, and a lover of good times. A complex and many-faceted life is given its due in this inspired photographic history of Ginsberg’s life from 1980 through 1997. The Late Great Allen Ginsberg is a deeply moving recollection of America’s most important post-World War II poet, informed by Ginsberg’s sensitivity, his love of life, and his humanitarianism. “Allen Ginsberg spent hardly any time alone.” We see him giving poetry readings and workshops, chatting with friends, pursued by admirers on the street, in group meditation, talking with Peter Orlovsky. The special power of Christopher Felver’s photographs comes from his ability to accurately and reverentially document Ginsberg’s intense network of social relations at the heart of the Beat universe. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

not quite as good as his poetry
An Unfair Argument with Existance is a wonderful collection of scenes that put Ferlingehtti as the continued movement of absurdist theater. These are not merely imitations of the absurdists that had come before, for as anyonewho has already read Ferlinghetti's poetry before, he does nothing secondrate is an amazing inovator.He does seem to have a problem, however, ofending his scenes.They are all do a wonderful job of creating theemotions, moods, etc that Ferlinghetti wants but none of them seem to endwell.I will admit that I may be a bit bias from seening a parallel inFerlingehtti's work and that of Ionesco's--who is the master of endingworks in the absurdist vein.However, the movement from one scene to thenext, the (I hate to be ambigious and use the word) tightness of the workas a whole is truly astounding. ... Read more

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The Bay Area is rich in local radicals, and most of them have taken a turn at the microphone of the Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair. Here's an all-star collection from the speakers' corner: Jello Biafra, spoken word artist and ex-frontman for punk band Dead Kennedys; Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti; author Christian Parenti (Lockdown America); author and punk rocker Craig O'Hara (The Philosophy of Punk); anti-prison activist and author Ruth Wilson Gilmore (Golden Gulag); and Emma Goldman Papers Project curator Barry Pateman cut loose on anarchism, art, prisons, politics and more, in a relaxed setting. ... Read more

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poetry, tr Lawrence Ferlinghetti, bilingual ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Excellent for French students and teachers!
Our final unit of the year is a sampling of Prevert's poems from Paroles, and my 8th grade students love reading his poetry in the original French.Using Ferlinghetti's translations as companion pieces helps those students who don't "get it" appreciate both Prevert and his use of language.I highly recommend this little gem!

Romance
A beautiful book of deceptively simple poems.It's often as close to taking a photo as words can get.

Born in war, but graced by beauty
"Paroles: Selected Poems," by Jacques Prevert, is Number 9 in the Pocket Poets Series from City Lights Books.This volume is translated by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who also contributes a "Translator's Note."This is a bilingual edition, with the French and English versions of the poems on facing pages.The back cover notes that Prevert's "Paroles" was first published in 1946; Ferlinghetti states that many of these poems "grew out of World War II and the Occupation in France."

I noticed some recurring themes and motifs in this volume.Prevert is very concerned with human pain and suffering; also, there are many references and allusions to war.There is a real iconoclastic streak running through this book.Although many of the poems have a surreal, whimsical quality, much of this poetry is also firmly anchored in tangible realities: an orange, a raincoat, a cigarette, "the faint sound / of a hardboiled egg cracked on a tin counter."Some of the poems have an almost haiku-like quality, saying much with an economy of words.

There were a number of poems that I found particularly striking."Song" had a joyful, transcendent quality."Inventory" had an experimental flavor that reminded me somewhat of Gertrude Stein's work."I've Seen Some of Them" is like a Whitmanesque litany, but with a darker, cryptic, and tragic tone."Picasso's Magic Lantern" uses words in odd and startling combinations; this poem eptomizes the role of the poet as a sort of prophet who evokes an altered state of consciousness through his creative process.Prevert's voice in "Paroles," although sometimes dark, is overall compassionate and even tender.He seems to be intent on capturing the contradictions, absurdities, beauty, and despair of the early 20th century in his poetry.

a great collection
I had become very interested in French poetry but was not sure who to read that was more modern. I first heard of Prevert in my French text book. They had included some biographical information on Prevert and one of his poems for students to read due to its simplicity of language. This was the tip I was looking for, and I was very curious to read more of this poet--and I am glad I did!
I would compare Prevert to W.C. Williams in the sense that they both find the profound in the mundane. This is an ability that I greatly admire in a poet, and Prevert has the gift of being able to illuminate the beauty that passes us unnoticed at all times. If you are a long time lover of great poetry or are simply looking to expand your horizons you will not be disappointed with this book. Prevert and his poetry span the entire range of humanity--the young love him as well as the old, the academic as well as the average reader. He is accessable to all, and loved by all.

a wonderful little collection
This is a fantastic collection of poems.Ferlinghetti did a fabulous job translating these poems into English.Jacques Prevert is a greatly neglected French poet who spoke volumes with his verse.This bilingualedition is a great gift for any lover of poetry.Poems like Pater Nosterand Flowers and Wreaths are beautiful verses.Prevert is simple inlanguage but amazingly poignant at his best.He knew the value ofdirectness.These poems are like little jewels of human wisdom.HumanEffort, I Am As I Am, Song of The Jailer, etc.There are many highlightsin this book.This often maligned, overlooked poet deserves to be rereadtoday.Many who give this book a couple honest reads will probably beimpressed by the sheer poetic wonder of this volume.I would state thatbecause it is bilingual, students of the French language might also findvalue in finding the translations en face with the original.This is agreat package all around. ... Read more

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Having an aversion to the idea of discussing the "craft" of poetry or the "process" of creating a poem, Lawrence Ferlinghetti usually mumbles something about "It's a trade secret" when pressed on the subject.

What is Poetry? is the closest he has come to formulating an ars poetica. It is an on-going project which he is constantly revising and expanding. The present volume is the latest stage along the road. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Mystical reflections on poetry
Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "What Is Poetry?" consists of s series of statements, rendered in free verse, which reflect on the nature of poetry. According to a note at the beginning of the book, the roots of this text go back to an oral version recorded in the 1950s. The statements often have a mystical flavor; reading the book is like reading a sort of postmodern scripture. Examples of the statements:

"Poetry is news / from the frontiers of consciousness"; "A poem should arise to ecstasy / somewhere between speech and song"; "Words are living fossils / The poet should / piece the wild beast together / and make it sing"; "Poetry is religion / Religion is poetry."

Many of the sayings are quite striking and thought-provoking; the most intriguing of them invite re-reading and reflection. Overall the book makes a fascinating complement to a more conventional prose work about poetry (like Mary Oliver's "A Poetry Handbook").

If there is a flaw to this book, it is that many of Ferlinghetti's statements are, I believe, not just applicable to poetry, but to any form of good writing. Consider, for example, when he writes "The poet is a subversive barbarian / at the city gates / constantly challenging / our status quo." I think that such a statement is also true about many writers of prose or drama; thus such a statement doesn't necessarily offer any special insight into what distinguishes poetry from these other forms. Still, I really like this book and recommend it to readers, writers, and teachers of poetry.

"Poetry is what exists between the lines."
"Be a poet, not a huckster. Don't cater, don't pander, especially not to possible audiences, readers, editors or publishers," is one of the recent challenges that Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti offered to budding poets from thirty San Francisco high schools. He knows. He's been writing poetry since his own school days in the late 1920s.

_What is Poetry?_is a golden-covered pocketbook of prose-poetry, with sixty-four pages of one to four lines of free verse on each page. The opening Note says that "[a] very early prose version of this text was transcribed from a KPFA (FM) broadcast recorded by Mr. Ferlinghetti in the late 1950s under the title, _The Street's Kiss_ ." After much revising and expansion, including publication in his "Poetry As News" column in the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, Mr. Ferlinghetti has shared his insights into this mystery of what is poetry and of what poetry shoud be.

Something one might find on the cutting-room floor is this preface that Mr. Ferlinghetti wrote in his column on January 16, 2000: " 'What is Poetry?' There are no doubt as many definitions of poetry as there are poems. Perhaps more, since there are more poetry professors and critics than there are poets. Perhaps there's a need in the new century for some new definitions. Or perhaps the golden oldies will hold up better than any. Risking the derision of postmodern eggheads, I'll put some of my old ones and some of my new ones to the test of the twenty-first century: Poetry is news from the frontiers of consciousness."

One might open this small book to any one of its pages and find "what exists between the lines." For here is a pleasure for the mind and a tasty treat for the senses.

essense of poetry
If you've ever had a hard time understanding or expressing yourself through poetry--this is the book for you. San Francisco's only poet Laureate, through a series of short observations about what poetry is, sums up the essence of the art form. The book's beauty lies in its brevity. No more than ten words on each page that goes to the heart of poetic expression.

It's a great book for any poetry lover. ... Read more