Lawrence Ferlinghetti was born in Yonkers, New York, in March 1919. The circumstances of his life perhaps make him particularly sensitive to the influence of both choice and chance. Both his parents were gone before he was two, he was abandoned at six, then as a teenager he was sent away by his caretakers after leading his gang into petty crime. He subsequently raised himself out of these circumstances, not just to salvage an ordinary life with a decent job, wife, kids, car and the rest, but to other circumstances as extreme as those beginnings, “to become Lawrence Ferlinghetti, publisher, poet, novelist, painter, spokesman of his time”. He gained a first degree from the University of North Carolina and an MA from Columbia University. He saw active service in the Second World War and…
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Citation: Wisker, Gina. "Lawrence Ferlinghetti". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 March 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1506, accessed 21 November 2024.]
