Ferlinghetti, you started it
all!
Not before Whitman or
Emerson,
but independent 20th
Century
American poetry and
bookshops.
Once in San Fran, flying in
late,
after terrific Mexican Food
in
the original Chinatown,
I saw your shop but it was
closed,
lights of the city shining in
the
California night
I owned once upon a time
A Coney Island of the Mind
and couldn’t dig it, and
A Far Rockaway of the Heart
as well, found it pretentious
and
the sequelic title
unimaginative;
both probably my father’s
copies,
who brought me to ‘Frisco
that one time as well. But
having
just read The Painter’s Dream
and a few others, I now
believe
in poetry once again.
