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A Coney Island of the mind, poems
121 pages
A jazz-fueled, freewheeling carnival ride through the absurdities and hidden beauties of mid-century America.
What it feels like
Reading this collection feels like stepping into a dimly lit San Francisco jazz club in the late 1950s, where the music dictates the rhythm of the night. The poems move at a brisk, improvisational pace, meant to be spoken aloud and felt in the chest. There is a restless, bohemian energy here, blending wry cynicism about American consumerism with a deeply earnest search for spiritual and artistic truth. The language is accessible yet surreal, painting a vivid, circus-like portrait of the modern soul. It is a perfect match for readers who want poetry that feels alive, rebellious, and unpretentious, offering a joyful stroll through the beautiful absurdities of everyday life.
- Mood
- bohemian
- jazz-soaked
- restless
- surreal
- Tone
- wry
- playful
- rebellious
- cynical
- earnest
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- anti-establishment rebellion · absurdity of modern life · spiritual hunger · artistic freedom · beauty in the mundane
- The writing
- Rhythmic, conversational, and visually scattered on the page, the lines are crafted to be spoken aloud with the improvisational cadence of jazz.
- The arc
- Moves from a wry, cynical observation of mid-century American conformity to a soaring, jazz-fueled celebration of art and spiritual liberation.
- Who it's for
- Readers who crave accessible, rhythmic poetry that challenges the status quo with a wink and a smile.
Content notes
- religious irreverence
- mild sexual references
About the book
The title of this book is taken from Henry Miller's into the Night Life and expresses the way Lawrence Ferlinghetti felt about these poems when he wrote them during a short period in the 1950's-as if they were taken together, a kind of Coney Island of the mind, a kind of circus of the soul. The twenty-nice poems of the title section form an integrated sequence in which the poet's eye sees beneath the "surface of the round world," while the section entitled "Oral Messages" was particularly written to be read aloud and communicated in the voice of our times. A measure of the poet's success in this is evident in that the paperback edition of a Coney Island of the Mind is now in its nineteenth printing with a total of 300,000 copies in print.
Description from Open Library.
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