A Far Rockaway of the Heart: Poems

By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0811213986
• ISBN13: 9780811213981
• Release Date: September 1998
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.43 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Great Bohemian Poetry

This is a great book for exploring the Bohemian poetry movement in the U.S. (namely, San Francisco). Contains the poem, "Autobiography," in which Ferlinghetti misidentifies Mount Rushmore as existing in North Dakota--but as I met him recently at a reading at the U of Minnesota, he was cool about it--knew exactly what I was talking about. . .so maybe he has learned a little since the time he wrote it!

GREAT!

A Far Rockaway of the Heart is Ferlinghetti's most recent anthology of poetry, and it's one of his best. With more than one hundred poems, it's also packed full of passion. I think that after many years of searching, Ferlinghetti finally found his true voice. These poems are sometimes funny, sometimes painful, but always beautifully created and full of life.