“Philip was a visionary like Blake, and he really saw the whole world in a grain of sand.” –Lawrence Ferlinghetti
“An inspired consciousness set at full tilt in raging protest, kisses, prayers, blessings, and outraged demands. All from the deepest silence and farthest travel.” –Michael McClure
Preserving Fire recounts the life and thought of the Surrealist, Beat Generation, and San Francisco Renaissance poet Philip Lamantia through his fugitive prose works. Ranging from poetry to politics to mythology to dance, from manifestos to travelogues to wartime declarations of conscientious objection, these writings, expertly collected by friend and longtime City Lights editor Garrett Caples, offer a dynamic picture of Lamantia’s multifaceted intellectual life and the artistic movements he helped shape.
Philip Lamantia (1927-2005) was an influential Surrealist, Beat, and San Francisco Renaissance poet. He is the author of many books, including Erotic Poems, Touch of the Marvelous, Meadowlark West, Tau and Journey to the End, and The Collected Poems of Philip Lamantia.
Garrett Caples is the author of many books, most recently Power Ballads and Retrievals. He is the co-editor of The Collected Poems of Philip Lamantia and is an editor at City Lights Books, where he curates the Spotlight Poetry Series.
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Hi, I'm Philip Lamantia
Philip Lamantia (1927 – 2005) first came to prominence as a 15-year-old poet in 1943, when he was published in the avant-garde periodical View and, the following year, in André Breton’s surrealist magazine in exile, VVV. He subsequently came under the influence of Kenneth Rexroth and participated in the famous 1955 Six Gallery reading, where Allen Ginsberg debuted “Howl.” Often considered a poet of the Beat Generation, his association with City Lights began in 1967, when Lawrence Ferlinghetti published Lamantia’s Selected Poems: 1943-1966 in the Pocket Poets Series. Following his next book, The Blood of the Air (1970), Lamantia published his remaining books with City Lights, including Becoming Visible (1981), Meadowlark West (1986), and Bed of Sphinxes (1997). He died in San Francisco, CA, in 2005.
