In 1953, Lawrence Ferlinghetti opened the storied City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, which is still thriving today. The store was a gathering place for Beat writers and poets, including an early reading by Allen Ginsberg of his incantory poem Howl (the poem is now studied by cadets at West Point.)

Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind, published in 1958 at the apex of the Beat era, is one of the bestselling volumes of poetry by an American poet. He continues to live in San Francisco, where he was named the city’s Poet Laureate in 1998.

Here’s the last stanza of Ferlinghetti’s “I’m Waiting,” from Coney Island:

I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green fields to come again
youth’s dumb green fields come back again
and I am waiting
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long careless rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeing lovers on the Greecian Urn
to catch each other up at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder