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Wikipedia / City Lights Pocket Poets Series

The City Lights Pocket Poets Series is a series of poetry collections published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and City Lights Books of San Francisco since August 1955.

The series included Allen Ginsberg's literary milestone "Howl", which led to an obscenity charge for the publishers that was fought off with the aid of the ACLU.

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 and the San Francisco Renaissance, but the volumes included a diverse array of poets, including authors translated from Spanish, German, Russian, 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

  1. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Pictures of the Gone World, August 1955 (reissued & expanded, 1995; 60th Anniversary Edition, 2015)

  2. Kenneth Rexroth (translator), Thirty Spanish Poems of Love and Exile, 1956

  3. Kenneth Patchen, Poems of Humor and Protest, 1956

  4. Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems, 1956 (hardcover 40th Anniversary Edition, 1996)

  5. Marie Ponsot, True Minds, 1956

  6. Denise Levertov, Here and Now, 1957

  7. William Carlos Williams, Kora in Hell: Improvisations, 1957

  8. Gregory Corso, Gasoline, 1958 (reissued with The Vestal Lady on Brattle, 1978)

  9. Jacques Prévert, Lawrence Ferlinghetti (translator), Paroles, 1958 (reissued bilingually, 1990)

  10. Robert Duncan, Selected Poems, 1959

  11. Jerome Rothenberg (translator), New Young German Poets, 1959

  12. Nicanor Parra, Jorge Elliott (translator), Anti-Poems, 1960

  13. Kenneth Patchen, The Love Poems of Kenneth Patchen, 1960

  14. Allen Ginsberg, Kaddish and Other Poems, 1961 (reissued 50th Anniversary Edition, 2010)

  15. Robert Nichols, Slow Newsreel of Man Riding Train, 1962

  16. Anselm Hollo (editor & translator), Red Cats, 1962

  17. Malcolm Lowry, Selected Poems of Malcolm Lowry, 1962 (re-edited and reissued, 2017)

  18. Allen Ginsberg, Reality Sandwiches, 1963

  19. Frank O'Hara, Lunch Poems, 1964 (reissued 50th Anniversary Edition, 2014)

  20. Philip Lamantia, Selected Poems 19431966, 1967

  21. Bob Kaufman, Golden Sardine, 1967

  22. Janine Pommy-Vega, Poems to Fernando, 1968

  23. Allen Ginsberg, Planet News, 1968

  24. Charles Upton, Panic Grass, 1968

  25. Pablo Picasso, Hunk of Skin, 1968

  26. Robert Bly, The Teeth-Mother Naked at Last, 1970

  27. Diane DiPrima, Revolutionary Letters Etc., 1971

  28. Jack Kerouac, Ann Charters (editor) Scattered Poems, 1971

  29. Andrei Voznesensky, Dogalypse: San Francisco Poetry Reading, 1972

  30. Allen Ginsberg, The Fall of America: Poems of These States 19651971, 1972

  31. Pete Winslow, A Daisy in the Memory of a Shark, 1973

  32. Harold Norse, Hotel Nirvana, 1974

  33. Anne Waldman, Fast Speaking Woman & Other Chants, 1975 (reissued & expanded, 1996)

  34. Jack Hirschman, Lyripol, 1976

  35. Allen Ginsberg, Mind Breaths, 1977

  36. Stefan Brecht, Poems, 1978

  37. Peter Orlovsky, Clean Asshole Poems & Smiling Vegetable Songs, 1978

  38. Antler, Factory, 1980

  39. Philip Lamantia, Becoming Visible, 1981

  40. Allen Ginsberg, Plutonian Ode, 1982

  41. Pier Paolo Pasolini, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Francesca Valente (translators), Roman Poems, 1986 (reissued bilingually, 2005)

  42. Scott Rollins (editor), Nine Dutch Poets, 1982

  43. Ernesto Cardenal, Jonathan Cohen (translator), From Nicaragua with Love: Poems, 1986

  44. Antonio Porta, Anthony Molino (translator), Kisses from Another Dream, 1987

  45. Adam Cornford, Animations, 1988

  46. La Loca, Adventures on the Isle of Adolescence, 1989

  47. Vladimir Mayakovsky, Maria Enzensberger (translator), Listen! Early Poems, 1991

  48. Jack Kerouac, Pomes All Sizes, 1992

  49. Daisy Zamora, Barbara Paschke (translator), Riverbed of Memory, 1992

  50. Rosario Murillo, Alejandro Murguía (translator), Angel in the Deluge, 1992

  51. Jack Kerouac, The Scripture of the Golden Eternity, 1994

  52. Alberto Blanco, Juvenal Acosta (editor), Dawn of the Senses, 1995

  53. Julio Cortázar, Save Twilight, 1997 (reissued in an expanded edition, 2016)

  54. Dino Campana, Orphic Songs, 1998

  55. Jack Hirschman, Front Lines, 2002

  56. Semezdin Mehmedinovic, Nine Alexandrias, 2003

  57. Kamau Daáood, The Language of Saxophones, 2005

  58. Cristina Peri Rossi, State of Exile, 2008

  59. Philip Lamantia, Tau and John Hoffman, Journey to the End, 2008

  60. David Meltzer, When I Was a Poet, 2011

  61. Tongo Eisen-Martin, Heaven Is All Goodbyes, 2017

  62. Tongo Eisen-Martin, Blood on the Fog, 2021

  63. Will Alexander, Divine Blue Light (for John Coltrane), 2022

  64. Nasser Rabah, Ammiel Alcalay, Emna Zghal, & Khaled al-Hilli (translators) Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece, 2025

References

  • Introduction, page i. City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, editor. City Lights Books, 1995. ()

  • by Marcus Williamson