City Lights Bookstore and some poetry pointers

City Lights Bookstore is on my short list of must-see San Francisco landmarks. It isn’t solely because of its iconic publishing history putting out books from the likes of Charles Bukowski, Allen Ginsburg, Frederick Douglass, Howard Zinn, and Noam Chompsky. Nor is it simply a great bookstore in a bookish town, although both its history and its shelves, tightly packed with inspiration, would set this bookstore apart. To me this is not why it is such an obvious monument. It is because City Lights is one of the last bastions of free thought. It is a beacon of majestic creativity.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti founded the shop with friend Peter D. Martin in 1953. The publishing company goes hand in hand with the bookstore, and the combination has given this independent shop long-term resilience. Ferlinghetti was from the generation before the Beats, what he calls the Bohemians. His fight to uphold free speech with Howl’s author Allen Ginsberg set a precedent for literary works previously outlawed as “obscene” to be accepted if they had “redeeming social importance.”

Daniel Laing's illustration of City Lights from the GrassRoutes Guide

Tameness is practically a requirement for success these days. Following orders, staying within the lines… to be outwardly successful I see moderation, even conformity, as a necessity. “Don’t ruffle too many feathers,” they say.

This happens in poetry too. From reading some of Ferlinghetti’s Poetry as Insurgent Art, I gather that attempts to stray from form, to venture into the avante garde, and to be so free with perception that you show the reader a new vision of the world are indeed what has marked evolution in poetry. The infamous Howl court case was another link in the chain of poetic leaps Dante made, and Wordsworth, Whitman and e.e. cummings. The same great movements have happened in other art forms, where those who played with others’ previous ideas in the most creative ways, then transcended them, are those we most remember. (I’m thinking of Arschille Gorky, perhaps a little less obvious than Bach or Miles Davis or Picasso, but someone who taught himself Cezanne and Miro in war-ravaged Romania, with little money and no parents, culminating in a new and distinct style that has been undeniably important to artists who came after him.)

Visit City Lights to get great books, but think of it as a sort of free-thought pilgrimage. You don’t have to agree, you don’t have to have similar politics. As my mother would say, “Be more French. They talk to each other about things they don’t agree on.”

This shop is like home for us dreamers who want to be a part of the conversation. Instead of taking a poetry workshop to loosen up your mind and unwind your preconceived notions, I recommend visits here, paired with a pen and a few hours a day to scribble down your thoughts. These are the two commonalities I see in artists who move things forward – the ability to dismiss the commonly accepted and to keep at it daily. Stagnation is the death of creativity, not to be confused with repetition, which can hone craft.

Ferlinghetti says, “The poem should have a public surface, by which I mean anybody who hasn’t had any education could still understand the poem. Then below that it should have a subjective or subversive level, which would make the poem more important than just a surface lyric that’s giving you a nice picture.” Reading books by people who were unabashedly themselves and who worked hard at it – even like Bukowski who can safely be called a disheveled, gambling, drunk – is an essential San Francisco experience. Make it romantic by reading in the place where these seminal books were published, and shuffling around North Beach as the Beat poets did before you.

The independent publishing enterprise is very much alive, hosting regular events and readings and leading tours of this hallowed, creative space. Podcasts of events and a virtual tour are also available online. Check out these upcoming events: Nov. 1 at 7p with authors of One and Only: The Untold Story of On the Road, Nov. 6 at 5p George Albon and Dennis Phillips read their poems, Dec. 1 at 7p Nelson George discusses his book The Plot Against Hip Hop…

I’m honored that my books are a feature in their travel section. Gobsmacked, really.