The light that would forever shine around North Beach cast an influence upon the literary world as the rays of the sun cast shadows on the sands of moment, thought, and sound. Through-out the l950's an entire new generation of writers would arrive on the literary scene grasping the emphasis of the literary word and its' attachement to moment. Pulling from a genre dealing with the subconscous mind, they sought to develope a new style of writing that avoided the old cliche's of the past. The reality of naturalism was giving way to the poetry and prose of the literary subconscous. Among the leaders in this trend towards this literary subconscous was author Henry Miller. The Beats, although beginning to gain some sense of notireity were still found along the fringe of the literary arts. Their "avant-guard" style had not yet been found in the desert of unknown litereria; but the signs of their eventual importance could be seen beneath the buried recesses of the poetic heart. Underneath the boulders and rocks of that desert of obscurity, the leaves of poetry lay growing in the soil of rebirth; burning in the heat of some lost forgotten aftermath. Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs, and Ferlinghetti awaited inside a backdrop of hidden submersiveness delving into those waters of chance, whose boundaries conceptualize only time. Ferlinghetti had also read Henry Miller and after reading, "Into The Night", was inspired to write a book of poetry that would place his writings inside the realms of becoming a well known house hold name in middle America. A Coney Island Of The Mind would help to define the career of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and place him among the ranks of the literary elite.
Haunting in the mood of landscape of scope and nature that the book seems to project as the carefully metered verse carries the reader through a surreal-like mirage of colors and sounds woven into a fabric of words. Themes arise throughout the book like waves rising and falling on past ocean's waters late evening tides never ceasing their endless continuous rythmns, until the last word has fallen from the final pages of his meter in a last solemn ecliptical gasp. The beauty of Coney Island Of The Mind lies in the themes that come alive through the spoken verse of Lawrence Ferlinghetti; for the carefully placed subconcous meter captures the experience of living, and these instances breathe forth from the pages, encompassing the reader in one final singulartory exhaltation of being alive. Reality, the nature of living in a world where the terms of being are determined by those constraints inherent in the human condition; the joy boardering around the realms of esctasy in being
