Selected Poems of Philip Lamantia, 1943-1966: Pocket Poets No. 20

The original American surrealist returns in a new edition of the 1967 classic.

“I am eager to do a book of yours,” Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote to Philip Lamantia in Nerja, Spain in 1966. “What about SELECTED POEMS OF PHILIP LAMANTIA?” The missive came at the right time, as Lamantia had recently reembraced the surrealism of his youth and sought to publish his current work alongside his key poems of the 1940s, when the then-15-year-old poet was published by war-exiled leader of the Surrealist Movement, André Breton. For Breton, the young poet was a new Rimbaud, but Lamantia also became known as a poet of the Beat Generation, participating in the 1955 Six Gallery Reading where Allen Ginsberg debuted “Howl.” A pioneer of San Francisco’s psychedelic culture, Lamantia reemerged through City Lights at the crest of the Summer of Love.

Selected Poems of Philip Lamantia reflects each facet of the poet’s development up to the point of its publication. “Revelations of a Surreal Youth (1943-1945)” includes the incendiary poems from his teenage years which brought him early avant-garde fame, including his signature “Touch of the Marvelous.” “Trance Ports (1948-1961)” covers the Beat years, evincing increasing involvement with mysticism, esoterism, and religion. Finally, “Secret Freedom (1963-1966)” heralds his return to surrealism, cementing his countercultural bona fides with the LSD-fueled “Blue Grace,” the zig-zagging Kundalini-inspired “What Is Not Strange?” and the Aquarian Age ode “Astro-Mancy,” which prefigures his later engagement with Native American culture.

This new edition includes an afterword by poet and editor Garrett Caples, recounting the book’s genesis through correspondence between Lamantia and Ferlinghetti and including archival images. A much-needed restoration to the Pocket Poets Series of today, Selected Poems of Philip Lamantia glows like a red-hot coal still burning with the revolutionary fervor of its time.