Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Peerless Poet-Publisher, Dies at 101

For nearly the better part of seven decades, Ferlinghetti not only wrote such poems but sold them, from San Francisco's City LightsHandy site which provides links to 7,500 US publishers' sites and online catalogues. www.lights.com/publisher/ Booksellers, which he founded with Peter D. Martin in 1953, and published them, at City Lights Publishers, which he started in 1955. Martin left the business that year, but Ferlinghetti remained, mentoring generations of people of letters of all sorts along the way.

Still, even the greatest verses end: Ferlinghetti died on February 22 at his home in the Golden City, his bookstore confirmed; his daughter, Julie Sasser, told the New York Times the cause was interstitial lung disease. He was 101.