Now in its 11th year, San Francisco’s week-long literary celebration known as Litquake kicked off on Saturday with a star-studded event to honor Lawrence Ferlinghetti as the 2010 recipient of its Barbary Coast Award for a lifetime achievement in letters.
It’s hard to pick a moment to sum up a night spent in homage to both the man and City Lights, the institution he founded (PW’s 2010 Bookseller of the Year), that have been beacons of free speech for more than 50 years. But singer-songwriter, author and activist Steve Earle spoke volumes in a few words. “I was born in 1955,” he said. “I never had to live in a world where Allen Ginsberg had not written Howl, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti had not taken the heat. Thank you very much.”
When Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye took the stage, they sang a few bars of “You’re My Coney Island Baby,” before Smith reminded the sold-out audience at the Herbst Theater that Ferlinghetti was “not a man anyone would say is, ‘also a poet’—he is a poet.” Kaye then played guitar while Smith dedicated a “little song” called “Wing” to Ferlinghetti by saying, “may it give you energy and sweet dreams tonight.”
It was a very subtle nod to the fact that the 91-year-old guest of honor was not in attendance. About a week before, Ferlinghetti caught a staph infection during a pacemaker procedure, and his doctors advised he skip the crowded festivities. But if he was missed in person, Ferlinghetti was present in words—those he wrote and has defended.
The night began with a “poetry chorus” comprised of devorah major, Beth Lisick, Michelle Tea, Justin Chin, emcee Marc Bamuthi Joseph and other writers reciting pieces of Ferlinghetti’s poems and part of the closing “holy” section of Howl. Eric Drooker, who designed the animation for the film Howl and most recently created Howl: The Graphic Novel read the Ferlinghetti poem one of his paintings inspired. Actress Winona Ryder read from Ferlinghetti’s “Americus,” beneath a picture of her younger self on the shoulders of the great poet she has known her whole life.
Tom Waits told the crowd that when he first came to San Francisco he thought “Ferlinghetti” was the name of a large geographical area, “and it turns out it is.
City Lights executive director Elaine Katzenberger took her turn at the mic to say, she had checked, and Coney Island of the Mind is still the bestselling poetry book in the U.S. And, behind Ferlinghetti’s sparkling blue eyes, she added, lies a sharp B. S. meter. Paul Yamasaki, with 40 years at City Lights, said Ferlinghetti’s vision of a bookstore as a meeting place of minds and text was evident in the people gathered to honor him. And, as Ferlinghetti’s long-time business partner Nancy Peters accepted his award she said, “We love you. We can’t live without you. So, see you at the bookstore.”
But through a video taped just days before, Ferlinghetti seemed to have the last word. He thanked Litquake for the Barbary Coast Award and then donned his red glasses and treated the crowd to a reading of a new work, “The Sea,” which his friend and fellow poet Jack Hirschman earlier in the night had called his best. It concludes: “Away then away/in our custom-built catamarans/over the hills of ocean/to where Atlantis/ still rides the tides/or where that magic mountain/not on any map/wreathed in radiance/still hides.”
