Literary Locus

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (age 99) and a chat with the San Francisco Chronicle

Q: What’s the last poem you wrote?

A: It was published in the Nation magazine. It’s called “Trump’s Trojan Horse”: “Homer didn’t live long enough/ To tell of Trump’s Trojan Horse/ From which all the president’s men/ Burst out in the White House to destroy democracy/ And institute absolute rule by corporations/ Bow down, oh Common Man/ Bow down!”

Ferlinghetti’s activist voice has not softened. When speaking about President Trump, he is unequivocal: “Trump is an evil man,” he says. “He’s so dangerous. I think you’ve got to take this man seriously. I think he’s out to destroy democracy.”

Q: Why San Francisco?

A: The first thing I realized, there was no bookstore to become the locus for the literary community. It’s really important if you’re going to have a literary community, it has to have a locus. It just can’t be out there in the air. So, from the very beginning, when we started City Lights in June 1953, the idea was to make it a locus for the new literary community that had developed out of the Berkeley Renaissance, so called, and it proved to be true. People just flocked to it because there had been no locus for the literary life.

[full article: https://www.sfchronicle.com/books/amp/Ferlinghetti-speaks-out-at-99-his-voice-as-vital-12764802.php?__twitter_impression=true