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Writing Across The Landscape
Copyright 2015 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Copyright 2015 by Giada Diano and Matthew Gleeson
All rights reserved
First Edition
Recipe for Happiness in Khabarovsk or Anyplace: By Lawrence Ferlinghetti, from Endless Life , copyright 1981 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
Dirty Tongue, Journal Notes Turning into a Poem, To the Oracle at Delphi: By Lawrence Ferlinghetti, from How to Paint Sunlight , copyright 2001 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
Pound at Spoleto: By Lawrence Ferlinghetti, from Open Eye, Open Heart , copyright 1973 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
Moscow in the Wilderness, Segovia in the Snow: By Lawrence Ferlinghetti, from The Secret Meaning of Things , copyright 1968 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
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To my mother, Clemence Albertine Monsanto,
and my brothers, all now in some heaven.
Every journal is a confessional. If its in the first person, it cannot help but be. Unless the author of it lies to himselfand that makes it even more of a confessional. I am trying to draw the rake of my journal over the landscape. Perhaps I will uncover something.
CONTENTS
Nerja Journals (FebruaryMay 1965)
The Mouth of the Truth (AugustSeptember 1983)
Normandy Invasion: published in a newspaper, October 1994
Picturesque Haiti: Journal for the Protection of All Beings #1, 1961
Poets Notes on Cuba: Liberation , March 1961
Berlin Blue Rider: Earthquake , 1967
Beginning of Russian Winter Journal (first entry)
Santa Rita Journal: Ramparts , March 1968
Paris: May 1968: originally published in slightly different form as An American in Paris, Art-Story Magazine , Fall 2006
The Mexican Night: New Directions, 1970
FerlinghettiGinsberg Australian Trip: excerpts were published in a letterpress chapbook
Mule Mountain Dreams section of Bisbee Poetry Festival: chapbook
Ristorante Vittoria section of Milan: published in poem form in European Poems & Transitions , New Directions, 1981
Seven Days in Nicaragua Libre: City Lights, 1984
Naples Notebook section of RomeNapoliSicily: Il Mattino , September 1984 (September 13), only in Italian
Journal Notes, New York: originally published as poem in How to Paint Sunlight , New Directions, 2001
ItalyFrance (20062007): the excerpt Aprs-midichez Whitman was published in a slightly different form in a newspaper after George Whitman died
PUBLISHED POEMS
Untitled poem on Pound at Spoleto: Open Eye, Open Heart (New Directions)
Recipe for Happiness in Khabarovsk or Any Place
Moscow in the Wilderness, Segovia in the Snow: The Secret Meaning of Things , New Directions
Lords Prayer Parody
High Noon, Oaxaca, published in Mexican paper, 2004, only in Spanish
Dirty Tongue: How to Paint Sunlight , New Directions, 2001
O long-silent Sybil (poem in GreeceItaly) was incorporated in a longer poem and published as To the Oracle at Delphi, How to Paint Sunlight , New Directions, 2001
At Sea, Meridian Press
I see this book in the tradition of D. H. Lawrences travels in Italy or Goethes Italian journeys.... It is as if much of my life were a continuation of my youthful wanderjahr , my walkabout in the world.
I wrote these peripatetic pages for myself, never thinking to publish them. I never reread them until Giada Diano and Matt Gleeson brought me photocopies of the original notebooks that had been slumbering away in the Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley.
Seeing myself years later through the wrong end of the telescope, a wandering figure in momentous times.... I was part of that Greatest Generation (so dubbed by a newsman) that came of age at the beginning of the Second World War.... As I worked in San Francisco and traveled, days and years fell away into the great maw of time.... The war ends, decades whir by, there is a rumble in the wings, the scene darkens, and Camelot lost!
America went through a sea change after that. San Francisco, which had been a small provincial capital, grew up. So did I, and I started voyaging. I was usually traveling to some literary or political event or tracking down some author for an undiscovered masterpiece to publish at City Lights Books.
Europe of course was a going back, finding roots. Since my earliest days in France with my French Aunt Emilie, I had always thought of France as my second home. When my ship was able to dock in Cherbourg after the Normandy invasion, I felt like kissing the ground. Three years later as a student at the Sorbonne in Paris, I still felt that way.
I came late to my fathers Italy, first as a student of Italian, la bella lingua , and later to track down my fathers birthplace. So much came from that!
I didnt keep journals consistently, so that some literary capers went unrecorded, as when I visited Paul Bowles in Tangier to pry from him his Moroccan tales in Hundred Camels in the Courtyard . This was agreed to, and then we sat dully in his high-rise apartment near the American embassy. And when Jane Bowles suggested we turn-on, Paul said he didnt have any hash. I was clean-shaven in a white suit, and I imagine he thought I was a narc. Paranoia, the dopers constant companion!
What else can I say about these interior monologues, except that some may pass as news stories filed by a reporter from Outer Space, to cover the strange doings of these humans down here, sent by a Managing Editor with a low tolerance for bullshit.
LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI
10/23/14
S.F.
T he journals in this book are the fruits of over five decades of travel. A few have been previously published, but most were typed from handwritten notebooks in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, or in Ferlinghettis own possession. They were selected and edited in close collaboration with the author. A generous offering from Ferlinghettis wealth of drawings has been chosen too. Together, these records of observations and experiences show that the poets journeys around the world form one of his most crucial and rich sources of creative inspiration. Although Ferlinghetti is famously associated with San Francisco, in fact he was molded by many formative years abroad. And though he is often identified with the writers of the Beat Generation because he published them through City Lights, Lawrence has never considered himself a Beat. These notebooks testify to his connections to a wide international field of avant-garde literary ferment and poetry of dissent. They are also full of some of his most striking prose, poems and drawings.
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