A Far Rockaway of the Heart: Poems (New Directions Paperbook) - Softcover

Ferlinghetti, Lawrence

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811213986 ISBN 13: 9780811213981

Publisher: New Directions, 1998

Synopsis

A Far Rockaway of the Heart is Ferlinghetti's sequel to A Coney Island of the Mind, written forty years later, in what the author has called "a poetry seizure" that lasted more than a year.

A sequence of one hundred and one poems with recurrent themes, it includes various sections on love, art, music, history, and literature, as well as confrontations with major figures in the avant-garde before the arrival of the Beat generation. This edition now includes eighteen new poems from Ferlinghetti's "Pictures of the Gone World" which he publishes under his City Lights imprint. A self-styled "stand-up tragedian," Ferlinghetti has been called "the foremost chronicler of our times." If A Coney Island of the Mind was a generations vibrant eye-opener, A Far Rockaway of the Heart is a wake-up call for a new age.

About this title

About the Author:

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.

Review:

"Love's not time's fool," said Shakespeare in a sonnet, but in Ferlinghetti's colorful portrait of the world, love and time magically fool each other until the end--just one more reason why the Beat should go on. -- Peter Kyper, "Rain Taxi"

A Far Rockaway of the Heart is further proof of Ferlinghetti's unique ability to be two poets at once-to be both radical and traditional, a firebrand and an academic. Even if it's not what you might expect from The Last Beat, Far Rockaway still seems like the best of both worlds. -- The Weekly Alibi 8-14 April 1998

All in all, Ferlinghetti has once again proven himself to be a sage with something to say about nearly every physical item in our universe, as well as art, music, history literature, geography, everyday life, human relationships in general, and this thing we call life. He makes us happy to be alive, sad about what we cannot change, and resigned that we don't, perhaps, have the power that we all had years ago to change the world. He is an old friend we would like to call up to ask if he has experienced this or that and what he thinks might be the best thing to do about it. And he would probably say it can't be helped, look out of the window of your soul and see. -- The Midwest Book Review

I love Ferlinghetti for the breathless quality of his work, often writing a whole page of poetry with no punctuation, only the spacing and indentation of lines denoting the breaks. He takes the reader on a joyful, angry trip and all that's required of us is to go with him, whether into exhortations on the pretensions of art or mediations on the nature of poetry. Savor this gem on being a poet: "and now in the night/in the general confligration/the white light still consuming us/small clowns/with our little tapers/held to the flame. -- Kliatt, March 1999

This collection of 101 numbered-that than titled-poems, written in what Ferlinghetti has termed a "poetry seizure" that lasted over a year, confirms that the author remains sharp, unrepentant, relevant, and fearless. His still-keen powers of observation guide us through the image-haunted century, from the sepia tintypes of his orphaned boyhood to the grainy footage of remote planets bounced back to us by the Hubble telescope. A Far Rockaway of The Heart also includes a nice bonus: 18 new poems from the latest City lights edition of Pictures Of The Gone World. All told, I seriously recommend it for Felinghettiphiles, Beat fans, and anyone seeking millennial closure from one who should know. -- Vice & Versa, October/November 1998

With ingratiating wit, Ferlingetti addresses the legacy of Pound, Eliot, Beckett, and others: his boyhood Latin teacher, busy with a "lovely housemaid," was one who resisted Prufrock's sea-girls "And off and on made faces at/ a copy of The Waste Land/ on a very high shelf." A fine if evanescent canzone shows the poet's serious, Poundian attention to matters of technique. Echoes visual and auricular resound from page to page, as Ferlinghetti at once deflates modernist pretensions and celebrates the achievement of his poetic mentors. Jazz players, chansonniers, painters, and sculptors come and go throughout these self-projecting pages. -- World Literature Today, Winter 1998

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0811213986
• ISBN 13: 9780811213981
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160