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.

Here are all of Ferlinghetti's poems set in the city he has lived in for over half a century. He brings alive, with wit and lyricism, scenes of city life: a Giants baseball game, the Green Street Marching Mortuary Band, bohemian North Beach, Golden Gate Park, yachts on the Bay, and more. Also included are historic photographs, scattered prose pieces, and the text of his mischievous inaugural address with his vision of the city's history as a poetic center and suggestions for keeping it that way. Lawrence Ferlinghetti is a bookman, painter and author of poetry, fiction, essays and plays. His most recent books are How to Paint Sunlight (poetry) and Love in the Days of Rage (fiction).

"For Annie, a young American painter, and Julian, the Portuguese banker and anarchist who is her lover, the events of that Paris spring are the backdrop against which their love affair is played." -- Back cover

Close to 100 figurative drawings in black and white, and in color, mostly nudes in love or strife, some "disastered by life," some with incisive or caustic words integrated in the images. This is a retrospective of Ferlinghetti's graphic work and play, ranging from his early drawings made in Paris ateliers, to yesterday's sessions sketching models in his San Francisco studio. Lawrence Ferlinghetti , poet and founder of City Lights Books, author of A Coney Island of the Mind and Pictures of the Gone World , among numerous other books, has been drawing from life since his student days in Paris where he frequented the Academie Julien and where he did his first oil painting.