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A Coney Island of the Mind - 50th Anniversary Edition, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Includes a CD of the author reading from his work

A million copies in print--translated into over a dozen languages--one of the best-selling and most popular books of poetry ever published, now available in a new hardcover edition containing a CD of the author reading his work.

Ferlinghetti is a national treasure, and his voice has become part of our collective conscience. Some of his most famous poems from this collection such as "I Am Waiting" and "Junkman's Obbligato" were created for jazz accompaniment. Written in the conservative post-war 1950s, his poems still resonate, as they will continue to resonate, with a joyful anti-establishment fervor that beats a rhythmic portrait of humanity. Ferlinghetti sings of a world in which "the heart flops over / gasping 'Love'," "cadillacs fell thru the trees like rain," and where "we are the same people / only further from home / on freeways fifty lanes wide."

This special 50th Anniversary Edition comes with a newly recorded CD of the author reading the 29 poems of the title section of A Coney Island of the Mind as well as selections from Pictures of the Gone World. Also available in a limited (200 copies) edition with a hard slipcase signed by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

"I got it signed when I was a teenager. I took the train to San Francisco, went to the bookstore and went to a nearby bar where I heard that he hung out, gave it to the bartender and said, 'Well, if he comes in, have him sign it for me, will ya?' And he did! There are great pieces in A Coney Island of the Mind--it feels very current in spite of the fact that it's fifty years old." --Tom Waits, on National Public Radio

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (b. 1919) won the first National Book Award Literarian Medal (2005). Their citation reads: "Through his publishing and bookselling at City Lights Books in San Francisco, his inspiration of the Beats, his steady publication and coverage of poets both classic and avant-garde, Ferlinghetti has been a major force and an inspiration in the literary world. He has always pushed the edges of the literary envelope and has been unwavering in his commitment to literature." Ferlinghetti has also received a lifetime achievement award from the Author's Guild, the Frost Medal of the Poetry Society of America, and has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

EXCERPT: Poem 15, "Constantly risking absurdity"

Constantly risking absurdity
                                            and death
     whenever he performs
                                       above the heads
                                                                of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
                           climbs on rime
                                           to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
                                              above a sea of faces
                paces his way
                                      to the other side of the day
    performing entrechats
                                    and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
                                    and all without mistaking
              any thing
                           for what it may not be

For he's the super realist
                                       who must perforce perceive
     taut truth
                   before the taking of each stance or step
   in his supposed advance
                                          toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
                                           with gravity
                                                        to start her death-defying leap
   And he
              a little charleychaplin man
                                            who may or may not catch
               her fair eternal form
                                     spreadeagled in the empty air
                      of existence