Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti (March 24, 1919 – February 22, 2021) was an American poet, painter, social activist, and co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers.

He began his journalism career by writing sports for The Daily Tar Heel,[7] and published his first short stories in Carolina Magazine, for which Thomas Wolfe had written.

"[17] Critics have noted that Ferlinghetti's poetry often takes on a highly visual dimension as befits this poet who was also a painter.

[17] Ferlinghetti concludes his poem with the recognition that "suffering humanity" today might be painted as average Americans drowning in the materialism: "on a freeway fifty lanes wide/ a concrete continent/ spaced with bland billboards/ illustrating imbecile illusions of happiness.

"[20] Ferlinghetti took a distinctly populist approach to poetry, emphasizing throughout his work "that art should be accessible to all people, not just a handful of highly educated intellectuals.

"[21] Larry Smith, an American author and editor, stated that Ferlinghetti is a poet "of the people engaged conscientiously in the creation of new poetic and cultural forms.

"[6] This perception of art as a broad socio-cultural force, as opposed to an elitist academic enterprise, is explicitly evident in Poem 9 from Pictures of the Gone World, wherein the speaker states: "'Truth is not the secret of a few' / yet / you would maybe think so / the way some / librarians / and cultural ambassadors and / especially museum directors / act" (1–8).

In addition to Ferlinghetti's aesthetic egalitarianism, this passage highlights two additional formal features of the poet's work, namely, his incorporation of a common American idiom as well as his experimental approach to line arrangement which, as Crale Hopkins notes, is inherited from the poetry of William Carlos Williams.

[22] Reflecting his broad aesthetic concerns, Ferlinghetti's poetry often engages with several non-literary artistic forms, most notably jazz music and painting.

[23] Soon after settling in San Francisco in 1951, Ferlinghetti met the poet Kenneth Rexroth, whose concepts of philosophical anarchism influenced his political development.

[24] While Ferlinghetti said he was "an anarchist at heart", he conceded that the world would need to be populated by "saints" in order for pure anarchism to be lived practically.

[26] On January 14, 1967, he was a featured presenter at the Gathering of the tribes "Human Be-In," which drew tens of thousands of people and launched what would become known as San Francisco's "Summer of Love".

"[28]Alongside his bookselling and publishing, Ferlinghetti painted for 60 years and much of his work was displayed in galleries and museums throughout the United States.

And friend during a 1996 visit to an art co-op in Sandusky, Ohio, which was subsequently vandalized and censored by a janitor the night after it was painted.

[33] Ferlinghetti died of interstitial lung disease on February 22, 2021, at his home in San Francisco, a month before his 102nd birthday.

[44] The National Book Foundation honored him with the inaugural Literarian Award (2005), given for outstanding service to the American literary community.

After learning that the government of Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is a partial sponsor of the €50,000 prize, he declined to accept the award.

[47][48][49][50] Frank Zappa namedropped Lawrence Ferlinghetti as one of the people who influenced his band's music, in the sleeve of his debut album Freak Out!