The City Lights Pocket Poets Series is a series of poetry collections published by

Lawrence Ferlinghetti Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti (March 24, 1919 – February 22, 2021) was an American poet, painter, social activist, and co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. An author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, and ...

and

City Lights Books City Lights is an independent bookstore-publisher combination in San Francisco, California, that specializes in world literature, the arts, and progressive politics. It also houses the nonprofit City Lights Foundation, which publishes selected ...

of San Francisco since August 1955. The series included

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of th ...

's literary milestone "

Howl Howl most often refers to: * Howling, an animal vocalization in many canine species * "Howl" (poem), a 1956 poem by Allen Ginsberg Howl or The Howl may also refer to: Film * '' The Howl'', a 1970 Italian film * ''Howl'' (2010 film), a 2010 Am ...

", which led to an

obscenity An obscenity is any utterance or act that strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time. It is derived from the Latin , , "boding ill; disgusting; indecent", of uncertain etymology. Generally, the term can be used to indicate strong moral ...

charge for the publishers that was fought off with the aid of the

ACLU The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is an American nonprofit civil rights organization founded in 1920. ACLU affiliates are active in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The budget of the ACLU in 2024 was $383 million. ...

. The series is published in a small, affordable paperback format, some numbers being also published in hardback. The series gave many readers their first introduction to avant-garde poetry. Many of the poets were members of the

Beat Generation The Beat Generation was a literary subculture movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-World War II era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by members o ...

and the

San Francisco Renaissance The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range of poetic activity centered on San Francisco, which brought it to prominence as a hub of the American poetry avant-garde in the 1950s. However, others (e.g., Alan Watt ...

, but the volumes included a diverse array of poets, including authors translated from

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

, and Dutch. According to Ferlinghetti: "From the beginning the aim was to publish across the board, avoiding the provincial and the academic... I had in mind rather an international, dissident, insurgent ferment."

List of books in the City Lights Pocket Poets Series

, ''Pictures of the Gone World'', August 1955 (reissued & expanded, 1995; 60th Anniversary Edition, 2015) #

Kenneth Rexroth Kenneth Charles Marion Rexroth (December 22, 1905 – June 6, 1982) was an American poet, translator, and critical essayist. He is regarded as a central figure in the San Francisco Renaissance, and paved the groundwork for the movement. Althoug ...

(translator), ''Thirty Spanish Poems of Love and Exile'', 1956 #

Kenneth Patchen Kenneth Patchen (December 13, 1911January 8, 1972) was an American poet and novelist. He experimented with different forms of writing and incorporated painting, drawing, and jazz music into his works, which have been compared with those of Will ...

, ''Poems of Humor and Protest'', 1956 #

, ''Howl and Other Poems'', 1956 (hardcover 40th Anniversary Edition, 1996) # Marie Ponsot, ''True Minds'', 1956 #

Denise Levertov Priscilla Denise Levertov (24 October 1923 – 20 December 1997) was a British-born naturalised American poet. She was heavily influenced by the Black Mountain poets and by the political context of the Vietnam War, which she explored in her p ...

, ''Here and Now'', 1957 #

William Carlos Williams William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism. His '' Spring and All'' (1923) was written in the wake of T. S. Eliot's '' The Waste Land'' (1922). ...

, ''Kora in Hell: Improvisations'', 1957 #

Gregory Corso Gregory Nunzio Corso (March 26, 1930 – January 17, 2001) was an American poet. Along with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs, he was part of the Beat Generation, as well as one of its youngest members. Early life Born N ...

, ''Gasoline'', 1958 (reissued with ''The Vestal Lady on Brattle'', 1978) #

Jacques Prévert Jacques Prévert (; 4 February 1900 – 11 April 1977) was a French poet and screenwriter. His poems became and remain popular in the French-speaking world, particularly in schools. His best-regarded films formed part of the Poetic realism, poetic ...

, Lawrence Ferlinghetti (translator), ''Paroles'', 1958 (reissued bilingually, 1990) # Robert Duncan, ''Selected Poems'', 1959 #

Jerome Rothenberg Jerome Rothenberg (December 11, 1931 – April 21, 2024) was an American poet, translator and anthologist, noted for his work in the fields of ethnopoetics and performance poetry. Rothenberg co-founded the method of ethnopoetics with Dennis T ...

(translator), ''New Young German Poets'', 1959 #

Nicanor Parra Nicanor Segundo Parra Sandoval (5 September 1914 – 23 January 2018) was a Chilean physicist and poet. He has been considered one of the most influential Spanish-language Chilean poets of the 20th century. Parra described himself as an " an ...

, Jorge Elliott (translator), ''Anti-Poems'', 1960 # Kenneth Patchen, ''The Love Poems of Kenneth Patchen'', 1960 # Allen Ginsberg, ''Kaddish and Other Poems'', 1961 (reissued 50th Anniversary Edition, 2010) # Robert Nichols, ''Slow Newsreel of Man Riding Train'', 1962 # Anselm Hollo (editor & translator), ''Red Cats'', 1962 #

Malcolm Lowry Clarence Malcolm Lowry (; 28 July 1909 – 26 June 1957) was an English poet and novelist who is best known for his 1947 novel ''Under the Volcano'', which was voted No. 11 in the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels list.

, ''Selected Poems of Malcolm Lowry'', 1962 (re-edited and reissued, 2017) # Allen Ginsberg, ''Reality Sandwiches'', 1963 #

Frank O'Hara Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara (March 27, 1926 – July 25, 1966) was an American writer, poet, and art critic. A curator at the Museum of Modern Art, O'Hara became prominent in New York City's art world. O'Hara is regarded as a leading figure i ...

, '' Lunch Poems'', 1964 (reissued 50th Anniversary Edition, 2014) #

Philip Lamantia Philip Lamantia (October 23, 1927 – March 7, 2005) was an American poet, writer and lecturer. His poetry incorporated stylistic experimentation and transgressive themes, and has been regarded as surrealist and visionary, contributing to the ...

, ''Selected Poems 1943–1966'', 1967 #

Bob Kaufman Robert Garnell Kaufman (April 18, 1925 – January 12, 1986) was an American Beat poet and surrealist as well as a jazz performance artist and satirist. In France, where his poetry had a large following, he was known as the Black America ...

, ''Golden Sardine'', 1967 # Janine Pommy-Vega, ''Poems to Fernando'', 1968 # Allen Ginsberg, '' Planet News'', 1968 # Charles Upton, ''Panic Grass'', 1968 #

Pablo Picasso Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...

, ''Hunk of Skin'', 1968 #

Robert Bly Robert Elwood Bly (December 23, 1926 – November 21, 2021) was an American poet, essayist, activist and leader of the mythopoetic men's movement. His best-known prose book is '' Iron John: A Book About Men'' (1990), which spent 62 weeks on ...

, ''The Teeth-Mother Naked at Last'', 1970 # Diane DiPrima, ''Revolutionary Letters Etc.'', 1971 #

Jack Kerouac Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Of French-Canadian ...

, Ann Charters (editor) ''Scattered Poems'', 1971 # Andrei Voznesensky, ''Dogalypse: San Francisco Poetry Reading'', 1972 # Allen Ginsberg, ''The Fall of America: Poems of These States 1965–1971'', 1972 # Pete Winslow, ''A Daisy in the Memory of a Shark'', 1973 #

Harold Norse Harold Norse (July 6, 1916, New York City – June 8, 2009, San Francisco) was an American writer who created a body of work using the American idiom of everyday language and images. One of the expatriate artists of the Beat generation, Norse w ...

, ''Hotel Nirvana'', 1974 # Anne Waldman, ''Fast Speaking Woman & Other Chants'', 1975 (reissued & expanded, 1996) # Jack Hirschman, ''Lyripol'', 1976 # Allen Ginsberg, '' Mind Breaths'', 1977 # Stefan Brecht, ''Poems'', 1978 #

Peter Orlovsky Peter Anton Orlovsky (July 8, 1933 – May 30, 2010) was an American poet and actor. He was the long-time partner of Allen Ginsberg. Early life and career Orlovsky was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City, the son of Katheri ...

, ''Clean Asshole Poems & Smiling Vegetable Songs'', 1978 #

Antler Antlers are extensions of an animal's skull found in members of the Cervidae (deer) Family (biology), family. Antlers are a single structure composed of bone, cartilage, fibrous tissue, skin, nerves, and blood vessels. They are generally fo ...

, ''Factory'', 1980 # Philip Lamantia, ''Becoming Visible'', 1981 # Allen Ginsberg, ''Plutonian Ode'', 1982 #

Pier Paolo Pasolini Pier Paolo Pasolini (; 5 March 1922 – 2 November 1975) was an Italian poet, film director, writer, actor and playwright. He is considered one of the defining public intellectuals in 20th-century Italian history, influential both as an artist ...

,Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Francesca Valente (translators), ''Roman Poems'', 1986 (reissued bilingually, 2005) # Scott Rollins (editor), ''Nine Dutch Poets'', 1982 #

Ernesto Cardenal Ernesto Cardenal Martínez (20 January 1925 – 1 March 2020) was a Nicaraguan Catholic priest, poet, and politician. He was a liberation theologian and the founder of the primitivist art community in the Solentiname Islands, where he lived fo ...

, Jonathan Cohen (translator), ''From Nicaragua with Love: Poems'', 1986 # Antonio Porta, Anthony Molino (translator), ''Kisses from Another Dream'', 1987 #

Adam Cornford Adam Francis Cornford (born 26 February 1950) is a British poet, journalist, and essayist and a great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin. From 1987 to 2008 he led the Poetics Program at New College of California in San Francisco, United States. B ...

, ''Animations'', 1988 # La Loca, ''Adventures on the Isle of Adolescence'', 1989 #

Vladimir Mayakovsky Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky ( – 14 April 1930) was a Russian poet, playwright, artist, and actor. During his early, Russian Revolution, pre-Revolution period leading into 1917, Mayakovsky became renowned as a prominent figure of the Ru ...

, Maria Enzensberger (translator), ''Listen! Early Poems'', 1991 # Jack Kerouac, ''Pomes All Sizes'', 1992 # Daisy Zamora, Barbara Paschke (translator), ''Riverbed of Memory'', 1992 #

Rosario Murillo Rosario María Murillo Zambrana (; born 22 June 1951) is a Nicaraguan politician and poet, who is serving as co-president of Nicaragua along with her husband, President Daniel Ortega, since February 2025. Before this, she served as the vice ...

Alejandro Murguía Alejandro Murguía (born August 15, 1949), is an American poet, short story writer, educator, and editor. He is known for his writings about the San Francisco's Mission District. Biography Alejandro Murguía was born on August 15, 1949, in th ...

(translator), ''Angel in the Deluge'', 1992 # Jack Kerouac, ''The Scripture of the Golden Eternity'', 1994 # Alberto Blanco, Juvenal Acosta (editor), ''Dawn of the Senses'', 1995 #

Julio Cortázar Julio Florencio Cortázar (26 August 1914 – 12 February 1984; ) was an Argentine and naturalised French novelist, short story writer, poet, essayist, and translator. Known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, Cortázar influenc ...

, ''Save Twilight'', 1997 (reissued in an expanded edition, 2016) # Dino Campana, ''Orphic Songs'', 1998 # Jack Hirschman, ''Front Lines'', 2002 # Semezdin Mehmedinovic, ''Nine Alexandrias'', 2003 # Kamau Daáood, ''The Language of Saxophones'', 2005 # Cristina Peri Rossi, ''State of Exile'', 2008 # Philip Lamantia, ''Tau'' and John Hoffman, ''Journey to the End'', 2008 # David Meltzer, ''When I Was a Poet'', 2011 # Tongo Eisen-Martin, ''Heaven Is All Goodbyes'', 2017 # Tongo Eisen-Martin, ''Blood on the Fog,'' 2021 # Will Alexander, ''Divine Blue Light (for John Coltrane)'', 2022

References

* Introduction, page i. ''City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology''. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, editor. City Lights Books, 1995. ({{ISBN, 0-87286-311-5)
''City Lights Pocket Poets - Cover Story''
by Marcus Williamson American poetry collections City Lights Publishers books