I just watched the documentary, The Coney Island of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, AND IT IS AWESOME.

I had forgotten all about him, sort of. He was interviewed in the Times magazine two weeks or so ago and I remembered how I once adored him and thought about him a lot in my travels.

From my first experiene when I was sixteen with his book, These Are My Rivers. where did I get this book? how did I get turned on to him? from my dad? some book on the Beats? where do we first learn to encounter our make believe friends and lifetime heroes? and one poem in particular, which I studied in chemistry class and concentrated on to make come true (for some reason only known to sixteen year olds)

she always said ‘tu’
in such a way
as if she wanted to sleep with you
or had just had a most passionate orgasm
and she tutoyed everyone,
but she was really like Nora in Nightwood
long-gaited and restless as a mare
and she coursed the cafes
through revolving doors and nights
looking for a lover who would never satisfy her
and when she was old
slept among horses

I’m sure this isn’t verbatim; this is from 10 year old memory, so don’t quote me on it. You can ask me later to borrow the book, which I am currently too lazy to retrieve from my bookshelf.

Later, in Brooklyn I bought A Coney Island Of The Mind but where? Shakepseare and Co.? St. Marks? The Alabaster? That one who’s name I never knew, the store of the bearded curmudgeon? Anyway, I read it on the F train back from Coney in the off season and I felt so connected to America and my lonely place in it. It is such a thin, pleasing volume. You may borrow this, too, if you like.

The greatest Beat, if you even consider him one of those, and a true American Artist. This film, which you really must see, watches him at work and at play. He, at seventy-something rides his bike to his bookstore (an aside to Danielle: you had better have gone there!), makes paintings, good paintings!, goes back to the Big Sur cabin where they all did their drunken dances, visits the original Shakespeare and Co., reminisces about his immigrant ancestors, speaks Italian and French, hangs with Ginsberg, and talks about being a poet and dissident.

It’s a thoughtful, quiet, funny film that delivers him to us the audience and makes you want to run out West.