Starting From San Francisco

The third printing of the enlarged edition of Ferlinghetti's third poetry collection, New Directions Paperbook NDP220, copyright 1958-1967. Starting From San Francisco was first published in 1961; this enlarged edition adds "Berlin" and "The Situation in the West," two of Ferlinghetti's most overtly political poems. The cover photograph is of Machu Picchu by Cornell Capa, from Magnum, the lost Inca city that haunts the long title poem, in which Ferlinghetti travels south from the cradle of the American counterculture to visionary conclusions in a lost horizon.

The poems range from road lyrics to "satirical tirades — poetry admittedly corrupted by the political, itself irradiated by the Thing it attacks" — Ferlinghetti's own description, from a note printed on the back cover. "One Thousand Fearful Words for Fidel Castro," "Tentative Description of a Dinner to Promote the Impeachment of President Eisenhower," "Underwear" — the titles locate the book precisely in the political-absurdist current of early 1960s San Francisco.