''A Coney Island of the Mind'' is a collection of poetry by
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti (March 24, 1919 – February 22, 2021) was an American poet, painter, social activist, and co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. The author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, an ...
originally published in 1958. It contains some of Ferlinghetti’s most famous poems, such as “I Am Waiting” and “Junkman's Obbligato”, which were created for
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a majo ...
accompaniment. There are approximately a million copies in print of ''A Coney Island'', and the book has been translated into over a dozen languages. It remains one of the best-selling and most popular books of poetry ever published. Because some of the material had been previously published, the first edition of ''Coney Island'' bears both a 1955 and a 1958 copyright.
''Coney Island'' was written in the conservative post-war 1950s, and the poems “resonate … with a joyful anti-establishment fervor”.
In 1967, a presentation of ''A Coney Island of the Mind'' was broadcast on ''
NBC Experiment in Television''.
In 2008,
New Directions published a Special 50th Anniversary Edition with a CD of the author reading his work.
References
External links
Litencyc.comCitylights.com
1958 books
American poetry collections
Beat poetry
Culture of San Francisco
New Directions Publishing books
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