How to Paint Sunlight: New Poems - Hardcover

Ferlinghetti, Lawrence

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 081121463X ISBN 13: 9780811214636

Publisher: New Directions, 2001

Synopsis

How to Paint Sunlight, a new collection of poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, is graced with a short introduction by the poet in which he says, "All I ever wanted to do was paint light on the walls of life." For more than fifty years Ferlinghetti has been doing just thatilluminating both the everyday and the unusual, all the while keeping true to his original dictum of speaking in a way accessible to everyone. He has been, and remains "one of our ageless radicals and true bards" (Booklist).

About this title

About the Author:

In recent years Lawrence Ferlinghettihas devoted a good deal of his time to painting. There have been a number of exhibitions of his work including a major show in Italy where he frequently gives poetry readings. He was very active as San Francisco's first Poet Laureate (1998-1999) and has been writing a weekly column, "Poetry as News," for the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review. How to Paint Sunlight is the fourteenth book of Ferlinghetti's poetry published by New Directions, starting with the ever popular A Coney Island of the Mind (1956), its American paperbound edition edging towards a million copies sold.

From Publishers Weekly:

"All I ever wanted was to paint light on the walls of life," Ferlinghetti writes in a foreword "these poems are another attempt to do it." A late-career miscellany divided into four sections, this eighth collection draws some of life's great polarities light and dark, tragedy and comedy, ecstasy and despair into the quotidian whorl of this beloved West Coast-transplant poet. In the eponymous first section, Ferlinghetti combines a familiar blend of direct talk and belief in poetic enlightenment to give voice to the "Big Sur Light" ("The moon/ After much reflection says/ Sun is God") and "White Dreams," and to give "Instructions to Painters and Poets": "stand back astonished." The "New York, New York" section features a "Manhattan Mama" and "Overheard Conversations," and makes stops in Europe and China before heading "Into the Interior," the last and best section. There, a series of three poems dealing with Allen Ginsberg's death takes us from the deflectively wry news of his imminent departure ("Death the dark lover/ is going down on him") to a bedside visitation by the poet's released spirit and beyond: "Allen died 49 nights ago, and in Bixby Canyon now the white misshapen moon sailed listing through the sky...." The intentionally over-simple rhymes ("What is light What is air What is life so passing fair?"), puns (as when he addresses his work to "the good burghers eating burgers") and long-winded poetic preaching of the earlier sections may not quite come off, but loss of youth and life and their attendant nostalgias come through, "made of love and light and dung/ some great immortal song." (Apr.) Forecast: Fans of A Coney Island of the Mind and A Far Rockaway of the Heart will find this book repetitive and diffuse, but Ferlinghetti has earned it. And since he does not overpublish, fans old and new will pick it up if it is placed in a demographically strategic spot.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 081121463X
• ISBN 13: 9780811214636
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 128