[Lawrence Ferlinghetti deserves] disentanglement from the old Beat-poet characterization. His poetry cannot be dismissed either as protest polemic or as incoherently personalized lyric. His craftsmanship, thematics, and awareness of the tradition justify a further consideration. (p. 60)

By the time his later works were published, Ferlinghetti had been firmly fixed by and large in the Beat school and received little more individual attention. (p. 61)

The subject of the doctoral thesis Ferlinghetti wrote at the University of Paris was "The Symbolic City in Modern Literature." His poetry reflects this acquaintance with modern European and American literature, and this constitutes the first point at which Ferlinghetti departs from the Beat stereotype…. [In] Ferlinghetti's poetry there is no bitter anti-intellectualism [as some critics found in Beat poetry] but rather a knowledge and appreciation of traditional literary materials which are integrated into his own verse.

A second generalization has it that all Beat...