"Lawrence gets you laughing then hits you with the truth.” ― Francis Ford Coppola
"A brave man and a brave poet.” ― Bob Dylan
 
The title of this book is taken from Henry Miller's "Into the Night Life" and expresses the way Lawrence Ferlinghetti felt about these poems when he wrote them during a short period in the 1950's—as if they were, taken together, a kind of Coney Island of the mind, a kind of circus of the soul.