POETRY AS INSURGENT ART

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, legendary Beat poet, literary activist, founder of City Lights Bookstore and Publishers, artist, and dear friend of Red Poppy, has just celebrated his 90th birthday. Lawrence represents what Red Poppy is about.

A prominent voice of the wide-open poetry movement that began in the 1950s, Lawrence has written poetry, translation, fiction, theater, art criticism, film narration, and essays. Often concerned with politics and social issues, Ferlinghetti’s poetry countered the literary elite's definition of art and the artist's role in the world.

In 1953, with Peter D. Martin, he founded City Lights Bookstore, the first all-paperbound bookshop in the country, and by 1955 he had launched the City Lights publishing house.

The bookstore has served for half a century as a meeting place for writers, artists, and intellectuals. City Lights Publishers began with the Pocket Poets Series, through which Ferlinghetti aimed to create an international, dissident ferment. His publication of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl & Other Poems in 1956 led to his arrest on obscenity charges, and the trial that followed drew national attention to the San Francisco Renaissance and Beat movement writers. (He was overwhelmingly supported by prestigious literary and academic figures, and was acquitted.) This landmark First Amendment case established a legal precedent for the publication of controversial work with redeeming social importance. (taken from www.citylights.com)

Lawrence has given us permission to quote from his long title poem from his 2007 boook, ¨POETRY AS INSURGENT ART", lyrical literary activism:

**we apòlogize for the crippled formatting of many of the lines, but blogger is not being nice!**

I am singling you through the

flames.

The North Pole is not where it used to be.

Manifest Destiny is no longer mani-fest.

Civilization self-destructs.

Nemesis is knocking at the door.

What are poets for, in such an age?

What is the use of poetry?

The state of the world calls out for

poetry to save it.

If you would be a poet, create works

capable of answering the challenge

of apocalyptic times, even if this

means sounding apocalyptic.

You are Whitman, you are Poe, you

are Mark Twain, you are Emily

Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent

Millay, you are Neruda and Maya-

kovsky and Pasolini, you are an

American or a non-American, you can

conquer the conquerors with words.

If you would be a poet, write living

newspapers. Be a reporter from

outer space, filing dispatches to

some supreme managing editor who

believes in full disclosure and has a

low tolerence for bullshit.

If you would be a poet, experiment

with all manner of poetic, erotic

broken grammers, ecstatic religions,

heathen outpourings speaking in

tongues, bombast public sppech,

automatic scribblings, surrealist sens-

ings, streams of consciousness,

found sounds, rants and raves—to

create your own limbic, your own

underlying voice, your ur voice.

If you call yourself a poet, don´t just

sit there. Poetry is not a sedentary

occupation, not a ¨take your seat¨

practice. Stand up and let them

have it.

...

If you would be a poet, invent a new

way for mortals to inhabit the earth.

If you would be a poet, invent a new

language anyone can understand.

If you would be a poet, speak new

truths that the world can´t deny.

...

Through art, create order out of the

chaos of the living.

Make it new news.

Write beyond time.

Reinvent the idea of truth.

Reinvent the idea of beauty.

...

Question everything and everyone,

including Socrates, who questioned

everything.

...

Be subversive, constantly question-

ing reality and the status quo.

Strive to change the world in such a

way that there´s no further need to

be a dissident.

Hip Hop and Rap your way to liber-

ation.

...

Your poems must be more than

want ads for broken hearts.

...

Words can save you where guns

can´t.

...

Give a voice to the tongueless street.

...

See the rose through world-colored

glasses.

Be an eye among the blind.

...

Be naive, non-cynical, as if you had

just landed on earth, astonished by

what you have fallen upon.

...

Dig folk singers who are the true

singing poets of yesterday and today.

...

Think subjectively, write objectively.

...

Like a field of sunflowers, a poem

should not have to be explained.

...

Haunt bookstores.

...

Cultivate dissidence and critical

thinking. First thought may be worst

thought.

...

Sow your poems with the salt of the

earth.

...

Don´t let them tell you poetry is a

neurosis that some people never out-

grow.

...

Don´t ever believe poetry is irrele-

vant in dark times.

...

Make new wine out of the grapes of

wrath.

...

Be the gadfly of the state and also its

firefly.

For the rest of the poem and much more, purchase the beautiful book at www.citylights.com or your local independent publisher.

Que viva Lawrence Ferlinghetti!

Que viva City Lights!

Happy birthday, dear bard.