Critical Essay | Critical Review by James A. Butler

SOURCE: "Ferlinghetti: Dirty Old Man?," in Renascence, Vol. 8, Spring 1966, pp. 115-23.

After an analysis of Ferlinghetti's style and subject matter, Butler suggests that Ferlinghetti has the talent and vision to rise above the restrictive label of "beat poet" and become a more "universal" poet.

The public first began to suspect Lawrence Ferlinghetti was a dirty old man in 1955, when he published through his own City Lights Press his poetic Pictures of the Gone World. This first volume identified Ferlinghetti with the "Beat Generation Poets"—Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, and others—none of whom a girl could comfortably bring home to meet the family. The public's dirty-old-man suspicions were heightened when Ferlinghetti was tried in a 1957 obscenity case for publishing Ginsberg's "Howl." Finally, Ferlinghetti's fame for filthiness was assured by a 1965 Time article describing a "happening" at the American Students and Artists Center in Montparnasse: "Beat...
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