"Muse" in Birth Of The Cool shows that Lawrence Ferlinghetti is probably the finest poet of his generation (and still very much with us).
His “Constantly risking absurdity and death…”, from "A Coney Island Of The Mind" is the best ever poem on what it is to be a poet.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti would probably not consider himself a beat poet, but the rest of us do - and Jack Kerouac, Burroughs and Ginsberg all owe him an awful lot; as publisher (City Lights), and as friend.
This is from "A Coney Island Of The Mind". In this one, Birth Of The Cool explains that no beat poet had a ‘real job’ in the Beat world, that is, except their women.