Perpetual Renaissance of Wonder

         America lost its poetry grandaddy on Monday when Lawrence Ferlinghetti at the grand old age of a century plus one. 

     Ferlinghetti is associated with the Beat Poets not just because he wrote jazzy, conversational verse, but because he published many of the books that made the Beats famous. He was brought up on obscenity charges for publishing Allen Ginsberg's Howl and beat the rap. San Francisco might never have become a counter-culture mecca had Ferlinghetti lost. 

     He is survived by the great independent bookstore he founded in 1955, City Lights Books (where admirers gathered to honor him yesterday) and by the many books he wrote, most famously A Coney Island of the Mind, one of the all-time poetic best-sellers. It contains these lines: 

     I am waiting for my number to be called

    and I am waiting

    for the Salvation Army to take over

    and I am waiting

    for the meek to be blessed

    and inherit the earth   

    without taxes...

    

     and I am awaiting    

     perpetually and forever

     a renaissance of wonder

His number has been called, but we'll have his words forever.