The City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco is an independent bookstore specializing in poetry. In addition to selling books, it operates as a small press publisher of poetry. The bookstore was founded in 1953 by Peter D. Martin and the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Ferlinghetti became its sole owner two years after its establishment, and who began the publishing program in 1955 in order to publish Beat poets. City Lights proved its worth by publishing Howl when no other publisher would touch it. In The Fall of America Allen Ginsburg describes City Lights as "home."
