A Coney Island of the Mind

In 1958 a collection of poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti appeared under the title A Coney Island of the Mind, published by New Directions. The book immediately found a large audience, drawn to the poetry for its refreshing liberality, unconventionality, and humor. It continues to be the most popular book of poetry in the United States. The poems have been translated into nine languages, and more than a million copies are in print. The title of the book is taken from Henry Miller's Into the Night Life. As Ferlinghetti has written: "It is used out of context but expresses the way I felt about these poems when I wrote them - as if they were, taken together, a kind of Coney Island of the mind, a kind of circus of the soul." Arion Press presents in this special edition the first section of that book, the sequence of twenty-nine poems called "A Coney Island of the Mind". The artist R. B. Kitaj has made two drawings in charcoal on handmade paper, one a portrait of the poet in profile that serves as the frontispiece, the other a portrayal of the poet on a plummeting rollercoaster, his hair and beard flying, observed by an all-seeing eye, that is printed on the cover. These affectionate tributes by Kitaj join the Arion Press in honoring Lawrence Ferlinghetti with a definitive setting of his most famous poems.

THE BOOK

A Coney Island of the Mind is the seventy-fourth publication of the Arion Press. The book was designed and produced under the direction of Andrew Hoyem. The layout of the pages is generous for the presentation of the poetry. The scale of the pages and care in hand composition has allowed for refinements to the typography and placement of lines in Ferlinghetti's "open field" style. With the cooperation of the poet Arion Press has achieved a distinct improvement to the text over the restrictive settings found in the trade editions.

In accord with the title and the aesthetics of the poetry and the artworks, the design of the book is purposely and playfully disorienting. The titling on the sides of the slipcase curves like a rollercoaster. On the cover, the author's name and the image by Kitaj are rotated so that the book must be turned sideways to be seen as intended. Similarly, the title on the title page runs up, and is on the left while the frontispiece is on the right, the profile facing the title page, in contravention of the bibliographical convention of title/recto, frontis/verso. The poems are not titled but are numbered in bold figures, turned ninety degrees at the corners. When a poem continues onto a second page there is no number. Thus, since these are not page numbers, some numbers on versos are odd and some on rectos are even, again the opposite of what might be expected bibliographically. The physical book pays homage to the durability of the poetry and the poet, a grand old man of conscience for this world.