Both M. and Akhmatova had the astonishing ability of somehow bridging time and space when they read the work of dead poets. By its very nature, such reading is usually anachronistic, but with them it meant entering into personal relations with the poet in question: it was a kind of conversation with someone long since departed. From the way in which he greeted his favorite poets of antiquity in the Inferno, M. suspected that Dante also had this ability. In his article “On the Nature of Words” he mentions Bergson’s search for links between things of the same kind that are separated only by time–in the same way, he thought, one can look for friends and allies across the barriers of both time and space. This would probably have been understood by Keats, who wanted to meet all his friends, living and dead, in a tavern.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the Subversive Art of Poetry: A Summer Reading and Writing Class
Where are Whitman’s wild children,
where the great voices speaking out
with a sense of sweetness and sublimity,
where the great, new vision,
the great world-view,
the high prophetic song
of the immense earth
and all that sings in it
—Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Populist Manifesto
Glory in the pessimism of the intellect and the optimism of the will.
Generate collective joy in the face of collective doom.
Liberate have-nots and enrage despots.
Don’t put down the scholastics who say a poem should have wholeness, harmony, radiance, truth, beauty, goodness.
Stash your sell-phone and be here now.
Don’t ever believe poetry is irrelevant in dark times.
Dare to be a non-violent poetic guerrilla, an anti-hero.
Temper your most intemperate voice with compassion.
—Lawrence Ferlinghetti, selected lines from Poetry as a Subversive Art
Dear Friends,
This summer I invite you to join me in engaging the work and life of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, author of A Coney Island of the Mind (a million copies sold), publisher of world influential books (Allen Ginsberg’s Howl), owner of the Bay Area countercultural HQ, City Lights Books, a painter since the 1940s, and a translator (his translation of Jacques Prévert’s Paroles is a classic).
Ferlinghetti died earlier this year and I recalled first reading him with appreciation in the 1980s during the the Reagan administration (his selected poems collected in Endless Life). I later learned that he, too, had ventured to Nicaragua, target of Reagan’s terrorist wrath, like I and several friends from Louisville (Seven Days in Nicaragua Libre). I cheerfully purchased his paperbacks over the decades (published principally by New Directions) and always found new poems and perspectives to provoke and inspire me. I lived in Berkeley and Oakland in the 1990s and often visited North Beach to pop in at City Lights. Since 2015 I’ve done classes on poets such as Alice Walker, Diane di Prima, Allen Ginsberg, and Anne Waldman, and it’s high time I offer something on Ferlinghetti!
I imagine a group of us meeting weekly for two months, having equal time for reading, writing and sharing. I propose starting Monday 21 June at 7 p.m. Central Time. Each session should go for at least 90 minutes. If the only people interested in the class are from St. Louis, I will attempt to arrange a place for our sessions. If others from elsewhere in the USA and beyond are wanting to be a part of this, I am happy to utilize Zoom. Following is some useful info—
- I strongly recommend you purchase LF’s Poetry as a Subversive Art.
- During the summer I encourage you to go to City Lights online and order any City Lights Publishers book that looks interesting to you. You could start by browsing the Pocket Poet Series.
- I may ask you to watch online (somehow) the 2009 documentary, Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder.
- We will do free writing inspired by Ferlinghetti poems during class sessions as well as during the week. So, you’ll need a journal (a Fabriano or an old-fashioned $2 composition notebook) or a device, as you like.
- I invite people to zero in on a creative cultural project you’d like to initiate during our class (or work on finishing one you have already started) .
- Tuition is $125 and you can mail a check to me (4514 Chouteau Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63110) or use the following email at Paypal.
Let me know if you are interested:
Feel free to forward this to any of our mutual friends who may be intrigued.
Palms together,
Mark
Poets to (Re)Read
Ginsberg Variations
“Catch yourself thinking.”
—Allen Ginsberg, “Cosmopolitan Greetings”
Catch myself gossiping.
Catch myself kvetching.
Catch myself zoning out.
Catch myself sneering.
Catch myself smirking.
Catch myself looking away.
Catch myself signaling.
Catch myself signing off superciliously.
Catch myself about to tell a quarter-truth. Continue reading “Ginsberg Variations”
Doing Poetic Battle with the United States of Amnesia
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Time of Useful Consciousness*
(Americus, Book II)
New Directions, 2012
This is Larry’s next installment of pastiche… of his own work, as he continues the Americus odyssey through U.S. history. I wonder what LF makes of Oliver Stone’s interpretation of U.S. history.
Herein, he includes fragments of previous poems, several of which I recognized from the 1970s & 80s, like “Jack of Hearts” & “Tall Tale of the Tall Cowboy”[from Harper’s magazine] & “Home Home Home.” His street scenes in San Francisco remind me of how I arrange similar Palestine moments but in an easier format to follow, namely, chapter (or unit) titles with numbers to remind the reader of themes and recurrences (as I learned chez Galeano).
LF once made a reference to Ginsberg’s “pack rat mind” and here he is showcasing his own graph of American consciousness, swirling with Gatsby, Vegas, Elvis, and scores more.
Here are a few passages that naturally caught my attention…
Even as Babette Deutsch tells her class at Columbia
“How can we write the great Russian novel
While life goes on so unterribly?” 11
With other immigrants creating caustic critiques
Of the American Way of Life
Like Noam Chomsky
With a father from the Ukraine
And a mother from Belarus
Or Howard Zinn rewriting history and herstory
With a father from Austria-Hungary
And a mother from Siberia 12 Continue reading “Doing Poetic Battle with the United States of Amnesia”
Share the Wealth Sunday 7 March: A Celebration of Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021)
Dear Friends,
Please join our gathering as we share representative works of the San Francisco poet, painter, provocateur, and publisher, whose A Coney Island of the Mind is one of the best-selling volumes of poetry of all time.
We meet this Sunday 7 March
7:00 p.m. Saint Louis time
Via Zoom–
Email markjchmiel@gmail.com for URL
The following is from the City Lights website…
A Biography of Lawrence Ferlinghetti
A prominent voice of the wide-open poetry movement that began in the 1950s, Lawrence Ferlinghetti writes poetry, translation, fiction, theater, art criticism, film narration, and essays. Often concerned with politics and social issues, Ferlinghetti’s poetry counters an elitist conception of art and the artist’s role in the world. Although his poetry is often concerned with everyday life and civic themes, it is never simply personal or polemical, and it stands on his grounding in tradition and universal reach. Continue reading “Share the Wealth Sunday 7 March: A Celebration of Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021)”
Ferlinghetti Florilegium
endless the ever-unwinding
watchspring heart of the world
shimmering in time
shining through space
as if they were watching some odorless TV ad
in which everything is always possible
Where are Whitman’s wild children,
where the great voices speaking out
with a sense of sweetness and sublimity
Let us not sit upon the ground
and tell sad stories
of the death of sanity.
the ones with old pocket watches
the old ones with gnarled hands
and wild eyebrows
the ones with baggy pants
with both belt & suspenders
And every Peace Officer with dogs
trained to track & kill
One not necessarily very beautiful
man or woman who loves you
The voice knocked me down, so soft, so tin, so frail, so stubborn still.
and was a loud conscientious objector to
the deaths we daily give each other
though we speak much of love
I could not imagine her carrying
a carbine
They lower the body soundlessly
into a huge plane in Dallas
into a huge plane in Los Angeles
marked ‘United States of America’
And let our two selves speak
All night under the cypress tree
and I am waiting
for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder
Him just hang there
on His Tree
looking real Petered out
and real cool
Yes
but them right in the middle of it
comes the smiling
mortician
—Endless Life: Selected Poems
New Directions, 1981
A Question from Lynda Barry
The Good News of Translation
1.
Thanks to __________, I Was Able to Read_______’s _________ [Language]
Richard Fein, Yankev Glatshteyn, Selected Poems [Yiddish]
Hillel Halkin, Sholem Aleichem, Tevye the Dairyman [Yiddish]
Nili Wachtel, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Meshugah [Yiddish]
Martha Collins and Thuy Dinh, Lam Thi My Da, Green Rice: Poems [Vietnamese]
Mobi Ho, Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: A Manual on Meditation [Vietnamese]
Cedric Belfrage, Eduardo Galeano, The Book of Embraces [Spanish]
Andrew Hurley, Reinaldo Arenas, The Color of Summer [Spanish]
John Lyons, Ernesto Cardenal, The Origin of Species and Other Poems [Spanish]
Samuel Putnam, Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote [Spanish]
Alexander Burry and Tatiana Tulchinsky, Anna Politkovskaya, A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya [Russian] Continue reading “The Good News of Translation”
Mentshes/5
Sign Up
by Lindsey Trout Hughes
Hi, Mark!
I hope this note finds you well. I saw your post last week about the spring writing course. I asked Katie Consamus over coffee if she’d like to take it with me and be my writing partner. Wouldn’t you know, she had already signed up! So here I am, hoping to jump on this train, too.
Let me know what you need from me to proceed. I’m very much looking forward to revisiting you and Mev.
Best from Brooklyn,
Lindsey
Summer 2016
by Lindsey Trout Hughs
I posted something on Facebook today
a gut response to that horror in Florida
and anyway it seems to be helping some hurt people
in a small way
and I wouldn’t have posted it
had I not taken your class
so many thanks to you
and now I’ll go cry some more
before I go write out this rage
like a motherfucker