When the WaPo lauds a person’s life, one can be pretty sure that the laudee was a dork.
After all - journalists. QED
Ferlinghetti was named San Francisco’s Poet Laureate in August 1998 and served for two years. In 2003 he was awarded the Robert Frost Memorial Medal, the Author’s Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, and he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2003.