Nancy Peters

Peters in 1974

Nancy Joyce Peters (born October 3, 1936) is an American author, publisher and co-owner with Lawrence Ferlinghetti of the City Lights Bookstore.

Quotes

1970s

• The tempest unleashes an alphabet
  letters fall through the apertures of crazy angles
  to spell out the future
  uprooting the course of invention
  and enslaving the masters
  • It's In the Wind (1977) "Ceremonies In A Polar Garden"

• I'm looking for the binding energy of a look
  a crop of reflections to be reaped
  in a winter of thorn
  when icebergs of illusion will melt
  to be served at high tea
  and the spaces between the poles pinned down
  • It's In the Wind (1977) "Ceremonies In A Polar Garden"

• The stars are dreaming
  but they are laughing
  I see myself in the smile of a polar bear
  while turning the pages of an arctic sky
  reading the delirious lines that
  foretell the sovereignty of language
  and the rule of invisible birds
  • It's In the Wind (1977) "Ceremonies In A Polar Garden"

1990s

• Lawrence is usually the first poet kids read in schools that they really like. It's a real turn-on for them.
  • Edward Epstein, "S.F. Finds Its Voice", San Francisco Chronicle, 1998-08-12.
  • On Laurence Ferlinghetti becoming San Francisco's first poet laureate.

2000s

• We have one called Commodity Aesthetics, which is our section on popular culture.
  • "Beat Establishment: City Lights Bookstore May Be Named San Francisco Landmark", CNN, 2000-06-25. : On book categories in City Lights bookshop.

• The most important of the beat poets. He was a really true poet with an original voice, probably the most lyrical of those poets.
  • Carol Ness, "Beat Poet Gregory Corso, 70, Dies of Cancer", San Francisco Chronicle, 2001-01-18. : On Gregory Corso.

• The old San Francisco is under attack to the point where it's disappearing
  • Simon Davis, "'Beat city' fights dotcom gold rush", The Daily Telegraph, 2001-06-19. : After City Lights was granted landmark status to prevent its eviction by a computer company.

• Maybe a thousand dollars
  • Shawn Hubler, "At 50, City Lights illuminates the past", Oakland Tribune/Los Angeles Times on findarticles.com, 2003-06-15. : On City Lights' profits for the year.

• When I joined City Lights in 1971 and started working with Lawrence, it was clear that it had been very much a center of protest, for people with revolutionary ideas and people who wanted to change society. And when I first began working at the little editorial office up on Filbert and Grant, people that Lawrence had known through the whole decade of the '60s were dropping in all the time, like Paul Krassner, Tim Leary, people who were working with underground presses and trying to provide an alternative to mainstream media. This was a period of persecution, and FBI infiltration of those presses.
  • "And the beat goes on", San Francisco Chronicle, 2003-06-09.

• Ginsberg used to stay in the publishing house. Our editorial office had two rooms and a kitchen; it was a tiny place. And one of the rooms was kind of a guest room so that visiting authors could stay there. Allen would come sometimes for a week at a time or more. And he hung out in the store, also. The store had become quite a center for writers by that time. Ginsberg was working on "The Fall of America," which was his long chronicle of the Vietnam War, which is full of the anguish and passion and anger that so many people felt. The war had been going on for such a long time by then. That book won the National Book Award [in 1974].
  • "And the beat goes on", San Francisco Chronicle, 2003-06-09.

• Then (in 1981) we did a book by Geoffrey Rips called "Unamerican Activities," which was a documentation of the subversion of the underground press. That was when the Freedom of Information Act made those files available. We were shocked, we couldn't believe that our government had been bombing people, infiltrating their organizations. In fact, I think one of the files listed Lawrence as a "beatnik rabble-rouser."
  • "And the beat goes on", San Francisco Chronicle, 2003-06-09.

• During the '70s, when the Cold War was still on, we invited Voznesensky and Yevtushenko to come here. We had very large readings for them. It was a way of kind of culturally thawing the Cold War.
  • "And the beat goes on", San Francisco Chronicle, 2003-06-09.

• The mood of the '50s is like today.
  • "City Lights' silver lining", Publishers Weekly, 2003-07-14. : Referring to the prosecution and acquital of Alan Ginsberg's book of poems, Howl, for obscenity in 1957.

• We're still in a state of shock … We have our "Dump Bush and Cheney" sign in the window, which Lawrence [Ferlinghetti] painted himself. We're looking forward to impeachment or perhaps, indictments for war crimes.
  • "Angry, resigned and motivated -- artists reflect on next four years", San Francisco Chronicle, 2004-11-09.

• He found in the narcotic night world a kind of modern counterpart to the gothic castle — a zone of peril to be symbolically or existentially crossed.
  • "Philip Lamantia — S.F. Surrealist poet", San Francisco Chronicle, 2005-03-11.: On her late husband, the poet Philip Lamantia.

Quotes about Nancy Joyce Peters

• She is one of the best literary editors in the country and is why City Lights Books has grown and done well.
  • Lawrence Ferlinghetti, "Tracing the public surface" by Ray González, The Bloomsbury Review, Vol. 23, #2, 2003.

External links

• In the Wind, published by Surrealist Editions and Black Swan Press, accessed online August 5, 2007
• webcast from University of California (2.15pm, 11 February 2006)