Ferlinghetti’s 93rd, Celebrated in Havana

Alfredo Fernandez

HAVANA TIMES, March 25 —  The 93rd birthday of LawrenceFerlinghetti (1919 -) a distinguished member of the “Beat Generation” was celebrated in Havana at the headquarters of the Estado de Sats forum on the evening of Saturday March 24th.

The “Beat Generation” was a group of American poets that marked the fifties with an active social protest which brought the beginning of the counterculture movement.

Among the poets who made up this generation were Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, who also found an echo in the world of art and music. The term “beat”, with its double connotation of depressed and beatific was first used in 1952 by Kerouac.

The tribute to Ferlinghetti was organized by poet and literary critic Polina Martinez, writer José Miguel Sánchez (Yoss), who spoke about the vicissitudes in the life of the poet, and writer and photographer  Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo (OLPL), who provided some anecdotes of Ferlinghetti’s trip to Havana and then read one of his poems.

Actress Ana Luisa Rubio made a dramatic reading of a poem of tribute.

The evening turned out to be a well attended for an event with poetry as its draw. It ended with a concert by rapper Raudel Collazo (Escuadrón Patriotica).