Rarely has any poet's work received such wide popular acceptance and such limited critical appreciation as Lawrence Ferlinghetti's writing. While the public generally views the work as immediate, alive, and relevant, the academic and poet-critic generally attack it as being simplistic, sentimental, undisciplined, and in open violation of the conventional poetic form. Some critics, caught in the quandary of how to respond to the radically new values of this engaged poetry, have sought to detract from the writing by naïvely branding the poet as "one of those spiritual panhandlers" or "an egoistic trifler." Others such as Crale D. Hopkins and Vincent McHugh, who are more in tune with Ferlinghetti's methods and intent, respectively view the writing as "striking, powerful, convincing," and Ferlinghetti as "an original and a natural. A rare conjunction and in light of his astonishing gifts, correspondingly valuable."… Revolutionary in its form as well as...