Lawrence Ferlinghetti in 2012 at Caffe Trieste, San Francisco. He died on February 22, 2021 at the age of 101
Farewell To The Beats Mr. Coney Island Of Our Mind
Ferlinghetti at 101 took the cosmic bus home
this week. A life abundant, blessed with
art, poetry, creativity, and a lot of fun.
RingMaster for the poetry revolution,
Mr. San Francisco Big Daddy!
City Lights! The Mecca of hip!
Ferlinghetti and San Francisco,
incubators of beat poets,
ragged saints, and the revolution.
He made his stodgy
city swing and explode with
poetry, art, and life.
Ferlinghetti, the Coney Island
impossible ride of jazz soaring,
to the infinite space of hip.
Di Prima, Ginsberg,
Kerouac, Snyder, and Ferlinghetti
in the howl for humanity and love.
Beatific beatitudes of bebop blues,
and bards rifting to cosmic tunes.
Farewell! Farewell! My beautiful
noble beats, blessed and sanctified
in that stoned rifting for godhead!
Blessed are you!
Blessed are the Beats!
We are blessed in those
beatitudes of blues!
Farewell, Ferlinghetti!
A cosmic rifting journey home!
Namaya is an internationally reknowned Jazz poet, storyteller, humorist and sublime improvisational artist. He has performed throughout the US and has toured in Europe, New Zealand, Japan, Asia, the Americas and Palmyra Syria.
Both as a solo artist, with his band the Jazz Beat Blues Poetry Ensemble, and with jazz musicians around the world, Namaya performs an astonishing blend of jazz word, story and improvisation.
Visit his website by clicking here
Listen to the 1946 recording of Lester Young playing “Blowed and Gone,” with Harry “Sweets” Edison (trumpet), Nat “King” Cole (piano), Dexter Gordon (tenor sax) Red Callender or Johnny Miller (bass), and Clifford Owens (drums)
