It has been a sea­son of mourn­ing for lit­er­a­ture: first the death of Mary Oliv­er and now W.S. Mer­win, two writ­ers who left a con­sid­er­able imprint on over half a cen­tu­ry of Amer­i­can poet­ry. Con­sid­er­ing the fact that found­ing father of the Beats and pro­pri­etor of world-renowned City Lights Book­store, Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, turns 100 on March 24th, maybe a few more peo­ple have glanced over to check on him. How’s he doing?

He’s grown “frail and near­ly blind,” writes Chloe Velt­man at The Guardian in an inter­view with the poet this month, “but his mind is still on fire.” Fer­linghet­ti “has not mel­lowed,” says Wash­ing­ton Post book crit­ic Ron Charles, “at all.” If you’re look­ing for him at any of the events planned in his hon­or, City Lights announces, he will not be in atten­dance, but he has been busy pro­mot­ing his lat­est book, a thin­ly-veiled auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal nov­el about his ear­ly life called Lit­tle Boy.

In the book Fer­linghet­ti describes his child­hood in images right out of Edward Gorey. He was a “Lit­tle Lord Fauntleroy” in a Bronxville man­sion 20 miles out­side New York, an orphan tak­en in and raised by descen­dants of the founders of Sarah Lawrence. “His new guardians spoke to one anoth­er in court­ly tones and dressed in Vic­to­ri­an garb,” notes Charles. “They sent him to pri­vate school, and, more impor­tant, they pos­sessed a fine library, which he was encour­aged to use.”

The poet would lat­er write he was a “social climber climb­ing down­ward,” an iron­ic ref­er­ence to how some peo­ple might have seen the tra­jec­to­ry of his career. After serv­ing in the Navy dur­ing World War II, earn­ing a master’s at Colum­bia, and a Ph.D. at the Sor­bonne, Fer­linghet­ti decamped to San Fran­cis­co, and found­ed the small mag­a­zine City Lights with Peter D. Mar­tin. Then he opened a book­store on the edge of Chi­na­town to fund the pub­lish­ing ven­ture.

The shop became a haunt for writ­ers and poets. Fer­linghet­ti start­ed pub­lish­ing them, start­ing with him­self in 1955. The fol­low­ing year he gained inter­na­tion­al infamy for pub­lish­ing Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (hear Gins­berg read the poem in ’56). The book was banned, and Fer­linghet­ti put on tri­al for obscen­i­ty. If any­one thought this would be the end of Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, they were mis­tak­en.

He has pub­lished some­where around forty books of poet­ry and crit­i­cism, nov­els and plays, been a pro­lif­ic painter for six­ty years, as well as a pub­lish­er, book­seller, and activist. He does not con­sid­er him­self a Beat poet, but from his influ­en­tial first two books—Pic­tures of the Gone World and 1958’s A Coney Island of the Mind—onward, Ferlinghetti’s philo­soph­i­cal out­look has more or less breathed the same air as Gins­berg et al.’s.

Quot­ing from Coney Island, Andrew Shapiro writes, “he coun­seled us to ‘con­found the sys­tem,’ ‘to emp­ty out our pock­ets… miss­ing our appoint­ments’ and to leave ‘our neck­ties behind’ and ‘take up the full beard of walk­ing anar­chy.’” He is still doing this, every way that he can, in pub­lic read­ings, media appear­ances, and a can­ny use of YouTube. His is not a call to flower pow­er but to full immer­sion in the chaos of life, or, as he writes in “Coney Island of the Mind 1” in the “ver­i­ta­ble rage / of adver­si­ty / Heaped up / groan­ing with babies and bay­o­nets / under cement skies / in an abstract land­scape of blast­ed trees.”

Fer­linghet­ti urged poets and writ­ers to “cre­ate works capa­ble of answer­ing the chal­lenge of apoc­a­lyp­tic times, even if this mean­ing sounds apoc­a­lyp­tic… you can con­quer the con­querors with words.” Despite this stri­den­cy, he has nev­er tak­en him­self too seri­ous­ly. Fer­linghet­ti is as relaxed as they come—he hasn’t mel­lowed, but he also hasn’t need­ed to. He’s a loose, nat­ur­al sto­ry­teller and come­di­an and he’s still deliv­er­ing sober, prophet­ic pro­nounce­ments with grav­i­tas.

See and hear Fer­linghet­ti take on con­querors, bul­lies, and xeno­phobes, under­wear, and oth­er sub­jects in the read­ings here from his through­out his career, includ­ing a full, 40-minute read­ing in 2005 at UC Berke­ley, below, an album of Fer­linghet­ti and Ken­neth Rexroth, above, and at the top, a video made last year of the 99-year-old poet, in Lady Lib­er­ty mask, read­ing “Trump’s Tro­jan Horse” under a grin­ning, gray-beard­ed self-por­trait of his younger self. Hap­py 100th to him. “I fig­ure that with anoth­er 100 birth­days,” he says, “that’ll be about enough!”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Mur­ray Reads the Poet­ry of Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, Wal­lace Stevens, Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Bil­ly Collins, Lorine Niedeck­er, Lucille Clifton & More

Allen Ginsberg’s Howl Man­u­scripts Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online, Reveal­ing the Beat Poet’s Cre­ative Process

The First Record­ing of Allen Gins­berg Read­ing “Howl” (1956)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Poets get to have strong opin­ions about what poet­ry should be and do, espe­cial­ly poets as well-loved as Mary Oliv­er, who passed away yes­ter­day at the age of 83. “Poet­ry, to be under­stood, must be clear,” she told NPR in an inter­view, “It mustn’t be fan­cy…. I always feel that what­ev­er isn’t nec­es­sary should not be in the poem.” Oliver’s Zen approach to her art cut right to the heart of things and hon­ored nat­ur­al, unpre­ten­tious expres­sion. “I don’t know exact­ly what a prayer is,” she writes in “The Sum­mer Day,” “I do know how to pay atten­tion.”

For Oliv­er that meant giv­ing care­ful heed to the nat­ur­al world, shear­ing away abstrac­tion and obfus­ca­tion. She grew up in Ohio, and dur­ing a painful child­hood walked through the woods for solace, where she began writ­ing her first poems.

She became an “inde­fati­ga­ble guide to the nat­ur­al world,” as Max­ine Kumin wrote, and at the same time, to the spir­i­tu­al. She has been com­pared to Emer­son and wrote “about old-fash­ioned subjects—nature, beau­ty, and worst of all, God,” Ruth Franklin remarks with irony in a New York­er review of the poet’s last, 2017 book, Devo­tions. But, like Emer­son, Oliv­er was not a writer of any ortho­doxy or creed.

Oliver’s approach to the spir­i­tu­al is always root­ed firm­ly in the nat­ur­al. Spir­it, she writes, “needs the body’s world… to be more than pure light / that burns / where no one is.” She was beloved by mil­lions, by teach­ers, writ­ers, and celebri­ties. (She was once inter­viewed by Maria Shriv­er in an issue of O mag­a­zine; Gwyneth Pal­trow is a big fan). Oliv­er was long the country’s best-sell­ing poet, as Dwight Gar­ner blithe­ly writes at The New York Times. But “she has not been tak­en seri­ous­ly by most poet­ry crit­ics,” Franklin points out. This despite the fact that she won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for her fifth book, Amer­i­can Prim­i­tive, and a Nation­al Book Award in 1992 for New and Select­ed Poems.

The word “earnest” comes up often as faint praise in reviews of Oliver’s poet­ry (Gar­ner tidi­ly sums up her work as “earnest poems about nature”). The impli­ca­tion is that her poems are slight, sim­ple, unre­fined. This per­haps inevitably hap­pens to acces­si­ble poets who become famous in life, but it is also a seri­ous mis­read­ing. Oliv­er’s work is full of para­dox­es, ambi­gu­i­ties, and the hard wis­dom of a mature moral vision. She is “among the few Amer­i­can poets,” crit­ic Ali­cia Ostrik­er writes, “who can describe and trans­mit ecsta­sy, while retain­ing a prac­ti­cal aware­ness of the world as one of preda­tors and prey.” In her work, she faces suf­fer­ing with “cold, sharp eyes,” con­fronting “steadi­ly,” Ostrik­er goes on, “what she can­not change.”

Her poems have includ­ed “his­tor­i­cal and per­son­al suf­fer­ing,” but more often she engages the life and death going on all around us, which we rarely take notice of at all. She peers into the dark­ness of her­mit crab shells, she feeds a grasshop­per sug­ar from the palm of her hand, watch­ing the creature’s “jaws back and forth instead of up and down.” Oliv­er often wrote about the con­stant reminders of death in life in poems like “Death at a Great Dis­tance” and “When Death Comes.” She wrote just as often about how aston­ish­ing it is to be alive when we make deep con­nec­tions with the nat­ur­al world.

“When it’s over,” Oliv­er writes in “When Death Comes,” ” I want to say all my life / I was a bride mar­ried to amaze­ment.” The cost of not pay­ing atten­tion, she sug­gests, is to be a tourist in one’s own life and to nev­er be at home. “I don’t want to end up sim­ply hav­ing vis­it­ed this world.” In the videos here, see and hear Oliv­er read “The Sum­mer Day,” “Wild Geese,” “Lit­tle Dog’s Rhap­sody in the Night,” “Night and the Riv­er” (above) and “Many Miles.”

Oliv­er was an artist, says Franklin, “inter­est­ed in fol­low­ing her own path, both spir­i­tu­al­ly and poet­i­cal­ly,” and in her work she will con­tin­ue to inspire her read­ers to do the same. These read­ings will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Meryl Streep Read Sylvia Plath’s “Morn­ing Song,” a Poem Writ­ten After the Birth of Her Daugh­ter

An 8‑Hour Marathon Read­ing of 500 Emi­ly Dick­in­son Poems

Hear Dylan Thomas Recite His Clas­sic Poem, “Do Not Go Gen­tle Into That Good Night”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness