As news and tributes to the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti pour in from across the social media and the internet, NDQ thought it would be appropriate to recognize Ferlinghetti’s influence on  our little corner of the world.

A good start would be the contribution by James McKenzie to our 2017 issue celebrating the Thomas McGrath centennial. McKenzie was director of the University of North Dakota’s Writers Conference starting in 1997, and in this article, he recalls the arrival of the Beats on UND’s campus almost 25 years earlier, in 1974, and their interaction with one another and with Tom McGrath. The stories are charming and shows the real camaraderie that existed between Ferlinghetti, McGrath, and the other participants. You can read it here and if you like it, you can download the entire issue (NDQ 83.5 (2016)).

You can watch Ferlinghetti’s reading at the UND Writers Conference here and some of open mic readings with his fellow Beats here. Check out the line up for this year’s Writers Conference here.

This week on social media, I’d be remiss if I didn’t tip my hat to our poetry editor, Paul Worley, who reposted Ferlinghetti’s poem, “Baseball Canto” which you can read here online. Our reviews editor, Sharon Carson, posted a link to a blog post highlighting Ronald K L Collins and David M Skover’s book,  The People v Ferlinghetti – The Fight to Publish Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (Roman & Littlefield 2019).

I’d be remiss if I didn’t like to some of Ferlinghetti’s poetry at the American Academy of Poets site, and a link to City Lights Bookstore which he founded in San Francisco.