Writing Across the Landscape: Travel Journals 1960–2013 - Hardcover

“Writing Across the Landscape shows Ferlinghetti to be a man of the world, literally. It also underscores the expansive and multifold reach of poetry and the lives of poets as not just artists but emissaries.... A vast, impressionistic canvas of place and mood―real and imagined. The writing is playful, luminous and trenchant.”
- Lynell George, Los Angeles Times

“Detailed and candid insights into Mr. Ferlinghetti’s life on the road and his assessments of what was unfolding around him as he traveled to Latin America, Europe, the Soviet Union, the United States and beyond.... But what many readers will relish most are those moments when his poetic eye and ear come into play.”
- Suzanne MacNeille, New York Times

“The closest [San Francisco’s] literary trustee has come to writing an autobiography.... A keen eyewitness [and] an advocate for the abolition of all borders and boundaries...Some of the greatest pleasures of reading these funky, sometimes experimental travel journals come when Ferlinghetti makes no attempt to register anything more than the contents of his own mind.”
- James Sullivan, San Francisco Chronicle

“[T]ravel writing at its best, filled with sympathetic and enlightening portraits of people and countries whose reality frequently contrasts with depictions of them in the popular press.... Illustrated with many of his hand-drawn sketches, these journals illuminate the inspirations for some of Ferlinghetti’s best poems and are a major addition to his literary legacy.”
- Publishers Weekly, Starred review

“In often wry and deliciously witty entries, [Ferlinghetti] chronicles his ventures.... Readers curious about how Ferlinghetti's mind works will find this whirlwind ride through Europe and beyond the ultimate vicarious escape, as his anecdotal musings hover over a richly savored life enjoyed without regret or misgivings. The artistic intensity of life suffuses this epic memoir spanning the ‘interior monologues’ of a gifted American artist.”
- Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

“Ferlinghetti is a consistently spirited and astute observer, spiking his vital, frank accounts with cultural, political, and personal insights both funny and stinging in language jazzy and lyrical. Soulfully open to the world and all its sorrows and wonders, Ferlinghetti affirms, in every line, the power of literature and art as essential navigational tools.”
- Donna Seaman, Booklist, Starred review

“A stunning portrait of a life.... To those uninitiated into Ferlinghetti's confectionary style, this volume may open a world of good reading of his prolific bibliography.... A master class on how one of America's best poets takes in the raw input garnered from his observations.”
- Robert J. Feldman, Huffington Post

“Lawrence Ferlinghetti is one of the legendary spirits of the Beat Generation, but his writings span the decades and now they span the globe. These sketches of some sixty years’ travels, composed on the run, are Ferlinghetti’s song of the open road, with all the immediacy and tenderness of his beloved landmark poems.”
- Sean Wilentz

“[T]his fresh treasure of a book reveals one of the most vivid, soulful, evocative and richly cultured travelers of our time. Here are accounts of Morocco and Mexico―of Los Angeles and the outlines of Heaven and Hell―as wide-awake and invigorating at those of a D.H. Lawrence. Here, too, are some of the sources of the rigorous, original poetry that has already sustained so many generations.”
- Pico Iyer

“This wide-flung embrace of a collection of travel diaries and new poems will amuse, astonish, disturb, and restore its readers with its deliciously detailed and unsparing compassion. Ferlinghetti is perhaps the last truly brave writer at work in the U.S. today.”
- Ann Douglas