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Nancy Peters Quotes

Nancy Joyce Peters is an American publisher, writer, and co-owner with Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Books and Publishers in San Francisco.

Nancy Peters was born in Seattle, and took a BA in literature and an MLS at the University of Washington. After travel and life abroad between 1961 and 1967, she was briefly employed as a librarian at the Library of Congress. In 1971 she moved to San Francisco and began working as an editor with City Lights. In addition to editorial work Peters was involved in coordinating collaborations with literary and community organizations sponsoring readings, performances, and benefits for progressive social action.

Among the authors Peters worked with are Allen Ginsberg, Charles Bukowski, Harold Norse, Diane di Prima, Julian Beck, Andrei Vozsesnesky, Anne Waldman, Andrei Codrescu, Sam Shepard, Ron Kovic, Ellen Ullman, Michael Parenti, Peter Lamborn Wilson, Rikki Ducornet, and Alejandro Murguia. Peters helped City Lights avoid a financial crisis in the early 1980s, and become a co-owner of the business in 1984. She and Ferlinghetti bought the Columbus Avenue building that houses the bookstore in 1999. City Lights became a registered landmark in 2001, the first time this recognition had been granted to a cultural institution as well as a building.In the book Literary San Francisco , she wrote about the bohemian and radical Bay Area literary scene, from the beginnings through the early 20th century. Co-editor of Unamerican Activities: The Campaign against the Underground Press, Howl on Trial, and Reclaiming San Francisco, she also edited Free Spirits: Annals of the Insurgent Imagination and a series of City Lights Reviews. Among other journals, her writing has appeared in Arsenal: Surrealist Subversion, Cultural Correspondence, and The Beats: A Graphic History . She is the translator of Antonio Tabucchi’s Dreams of Dreams and The Last Three Days of Fernando Pessoa and was a longtime member of the board of directors of the Istituto Italiano Scuola.

In 2007, after 23 years as City Lights’ executive director, Peters stepped down but remains on the board of directors and is president of City Lights Foundation. In 2010, she was given the Northern California Book Association’s Fred Cody Award for Lifetime Achievement.



Ferlinghetti has praised her as "one of the best literary editors in the country."In 1978, she married the Surrealist-Beat Generation poet Philip Lamantia , who lectured at the Art Institute and San Francisco State University. Peters participated with Lamantia in the World Surrealist Exhibition in Chicago in 1976, and they sometimes read together at such events as a benefit for Hopi and Navajo traditional peoples and the Santa Barbara Poetry Festival, and they recorded for the San Francisco Poetry Center Archives. Fourteen of her poems were published in a Black Swan Press chapbook entitled It’s In the Wind. Her poetry was included in Surrealist Women, An International Anthology and in Anthologie des Poètes Surréalistes Américains. Wikipedia  

✵ 3. October 1936
Nancy Peters photo
Nancy Peters: 16   quotes 0   likes

Famous Nancy Peters Quotes

“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”

Nancy Peters

It's In the Wind (1977) "Ceremonies In A Polar Garden"
1970s

“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.”

Nancy Peters

"Angry, resigned and motivated -- artists reflect on next four years", http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/11/09/DDG2R9N52H1.DTL San Francisco Chronicle, 2004-11-09.
2000s

“The most important of the beat poets. He was a really true poet with an original voice, probably the most lyrical of those poets.”

Nancy Peters

Carol Ness, "Beat Poet Gregory Corso, 70, Dies of Cancer" http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/01/18/MN143830.DTL, San Francisco Chronicle, 2001-01-18. : On Gregory Corso.
2000s

“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."”

Nancy Peters

"And the beat goes on", http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/06/09/DD158147.DTL San Francisco Chronicle, 2003-06-09.
2000s

“We have one called Commodity Aesthetics, which is our section on popular culture.”

Nancy Peters

"Beat Establishment: City Lights Bookstore May Be Named San Francisco Landmark", http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0006/25/sun.03.html CNN, 2000-06-25. : On book categories in City Lights bookshop.
2000s

“The mood of the '50s is like today.”

Nancy Peters

"City Lights' silver lining", http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA310566.html Publishers Weekly, 2003-07-14. : Referring to the prosecution and acquital of Alan Ginsberg's book of poems, Howl, for obscenity in 1957.
2000s

Nancy Peters Quotes

“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.”

Nancy Peters

"And the beat goes on", http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/06/09/DD158147.DTL San Francisco Chronicle, 2003-06-09.
2000s

People , Idea , Light , Change

“Lawrence is usually the first poet kids read in schools that they really like. It's a real turn-on for them.”

Nancy Peters

Edward Epstein, "S.F. Finds Its Voice", http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1998/08/12/MN76094.DTL San Francisco Chronicle, 1998-08-12.
On Laurence Ferlinghetti becoming San Francisco's first poet laureate.
1990s

School , Reading

“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.”

Nancy Peters

"Philip Lamantia — S.F. Surrealist poet", http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/03/11/BAG4MBNRMF1.DTL San Francisco Chronicle, 2005-03-11.: On her late husband, the poet Philip Lamantia.
2000s

World , Night

“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.”

Nancy Peters

"And the beat goes on", http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/06/09/DD158147.DTL San Francisco Chronicle, 2003-06-09.
2000s

War , Way , Reading

“The old San Francisco is under attack to the point where it's disappearing”

Nancy Peters

Simon Davis, "'Beat city' fights dotcom gold rush", http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2000/09/06/wsan06.xml The Daily Telegraph, 2001-06-19. : After City Lights was granted landmark status to prevent its eviction by a computer company.
2000s

“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”

Nancy Peters

It's In the Wind (1977) "Ceremonies In A Polar Garden"
1970s

Smile , Dreams , Star , Bird

“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”

Nancy Peters

It's In the Wind (1977) "Ceremonies In A Polar Garden"
1970s

Future

“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].”

Nancy Peters

"And the beat goes on", http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/06/09/DD158147.DTL San Francisco Chronicle, 2003-06-09.
2000s

War , People , Books , Passion

“It's kind of a world neighborhood bookstore. They fly in from Prague or Tokyo — we had a whole busload of South Africans saying, "They've got my books in here." … The president of the Czech Republic [Václav Havel] came by to pay us a state visit, turned to the shelf, and his book was there: "Look, they've got my book."”

Nancy Peters

Dennis McNally, "The Beat Goes On", http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/notebook/2003/07/ma_462_01.html MotherJones, July/August 2003.: On City Lights
2000s

Books , World

“Maybe a thousand dollars”

Nancy Peters

Shawn Hubler, "At 50, City Lights illuminates the past", http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20030615/ai_n14549339 Oakland Tribune/Los Angeles Times on findarticles.com, 2003-06-15. : On City Lights' profits for the year.
2000s

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