October 7th is Beat Poetry Day. It marks the anniversary Allen Ginsberg reading his radical poem, ‘Howl’, at the Gallery 6 in San Francisco in 1955. The poet and owner of the City Lights Bookshop (still there to this day, visit if you get the chance),
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, was subsequently tried for obscenity and cleared. Here, Visiting Research Fellow, Martin Jesinghausen, reflects on Ferlinghetti’s influence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
New American Poetry against the Plague<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the last year or so I found\nsome relief from virally or politically induced nightmares in poetry. New\nAmerican writing proved particularly good as antidote against the atrocities of\nbudding US-style fascism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I came across two new writers Ocean Vuong\n(born 1988) and Jennie Xie (no data), immigrants into the USA from Asia at an\nearly age, one from Saigon, Vietnam, the other from Hefei, China. Both are offering\nnew perspectives on global culture and on North America today, often by rendering\nstrange the tropes and images from an unknown homeland they left behind, through\nblending them with material representing their new-world environment, at the\nsame time alien and familiar to them. As child-migrant outsiders they have grown\nup inside an adopted culture, in language acquired and honed to standards of poetic\nexpressiveness. This is poetry that offers fresh and raw vistas, new ways of\nseeing and feeling across divides. Vuong\u2019s collection Night Sky with Exit\nWounds<\/em> came out in 2016, Xie\u2019s is called Eye Level<\/em> and was published\n2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Awarding the 2020 Nobel Prize for\nliterature to Louise Gl\u00fcck (born New York 1943) came as a lovely surprise, the\nsecond American poet in a row following Dylan\u2019s selection of 2016. Gl\u00fcck<\/a>\u2019s poetry is dark post-modernist word-music, her special\nvoice that of a peculiar stream-of-consciousness, often as if history itself were\nspeaking or dreaming. Material from myth and the collective unconscious resurfaces,\nsalvaged from an underground flow of cultural jetsam and flotsam reaching us\nfrom ancient times. She has not published much very recently; her career is\nfully documented with complete collections in Louise Gl\u00fcck. Poems 1962-2012.<\/em>\nThe latest title dates back to 2014: Faithful and Virtuous Night<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few weeks ago I discovered Terrance\nHayes\u2019s prize-winning 2018 collection entitled American Sonnets for my Past\nand Present Assassin<\/em>. The intricate and strict formal architecture of the Sonnet,\na new poetic form originating at the beginning of the modern period with Petrarch,\nproved attractive for the expression of complex, often contradicting, or even paradoxical\nthoughts, ever since its heyday when it was adopted (and adapted) in\nElizabethan poetry, and especially Shakespeare, of course. Hayes appropriates\nthe Sonnet as an Afro-American form. He does so by breaking away from the\nprescriptive traditional rules of Sonnet-construction. He \u2018deconstructs\u2019 the\nSonnet by overhauling its old formal parameters so that it becomes fit as a\nmedium for debates of the aggravating contradictions in contemporary\nUS-culture. Riveting stuff!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two of my older favourites, rather\nwell-known in this country because of their long-standing association with the London\nReview of Books<\/em>, have also been publishing new work recently. The first of\nthem, Frederick Seidel (born St Louis 1936!), especially appeals because his\ntexts are irreverent, grumpy, sinister, funny, sarcastic, and often politically\nless than correct, a virtuoso technician of words with a sharp scalpel against\nthe arteries of current pseudo-culture and ogre-politics. Check out his 2016\npoem \u2018Trump for President\u2019 published first in the LRB 29, 2016. Seidel is a city-jungle poet. His two last\ncollections give evidence again of his deep attachment to New York: Widening\nIncome Inequality, <\/em>2017, and Peaches Goes it Alone<\/em>, 2019, are Seidel\u2019s\n\u2018late style\u2019 monuments. Also search out perhaps \u2018Karl\u2019, \u2018In memory of Karl\nMiller\u2019, erstwhile editor of the LRB and friend of Seidel\u2019s (first published New\nYork Review of Books<\/em>, November 20, 2014, also collected): a love letter from\nan American cosmopolitan writer to London as a hub of urban culture. Last month\nFaber published the latest selection of what Seidel deems fit for posterity: Frederick\nSeidel<\/em> New Selected Poems<\/em>, 2021. \u2013 The second of the old guard close to my heart is\nAugust Kleinzahler (born 1949, New Jersey), more gentle than Seidel, and as\naccomplished and wide-ranging in themes and forms, perhaps with a more\nnarrative scope. His latest collection Snow Approaching on the Hudson<\/em> came\nout this year, and cuts to the chase of the situation. The eponymous poem I found very touching. It\nchimes as a commentary on the current virus misery, a Covid winter-journey of\nthe freezing mind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, thankfully things have\ncome to a head on the politics front, for the moment at\nleast, or so it seems, with American fascism defeated on 21 January. Can poetry save the world from evil and\naffliction? American poetry had certainly done its bit in the battle against\npopulism as a form of public deception \nand fascist dictatorship. A month after Bidens\u2019s inauguration Lawrence Ferlinghetti passed away, on\n22 February, at the ripe age of 101. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ferlinghetti used poetry as a political\nweapon. As a publisher and in his own poetry he fought political\nauthoritarianism. He advocated enlightenment values, breaking a lance\nfor liberty, equality, justice, globally and at\nhome, reason, internationalism, and, in true Californian spirit,\nfree love, boundless imagination and expansion of the mind. With the\nslaying of the Trump dragon he lived to enjoy a small victory in his lifelong, nearly\n70 year-fight against bigotry, obfuscation, dictatorship, war-mongering and\nmedia terror. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A few more thoughts on this large figure\nof post-war poetry might suffice. Ferlinghetti entered the arena 1955 with a\nfirst collection called Pictures of the Gone World<\/em>, published\nby City Lights Books Press, <\/em>the printing-press side of\nthe bookshop he founded in San Francisco in 1953. The independent bookstore-publication\nmodel he had transplanted to San Francisco from good old\nModernist Paris, Europe, where in 1919 Shakespeare & Company<\/em>,\nwas set up by the American Sylvia Beach: from Paris to San Francisco with\nlove – a transatlantic shuttle that worked in both directions. Like Shakespeare\n& Company<\/em> for new experiments in Modernist writing, City Lights\nBooks<\/em> turned into a laboratory for new forms and styles of post-modern writing,\na locus\/focus for the Beat Generation. And like the Parisian motherlode, before\nit was closed down by the Fascists in 1941, the San Franciscan franchise provided\n(they both still do; Shakespeare & Company<\/em> re-emerged after the war!\nGo visit!) networking space and independent printing opportunities\nfor artists and writers, with an agenda of broadening\ncultural and political horizons of readers, writers and small-gig\naudiences at readings and concerts. The publication of Allen Ginsberg\u2019s Howl<\/em> in\n1956 by City Lights Books<\/em> press was as momentous for the\nburgeoning revival of post-modern American poetry as the\npublication of Joyce\u2019s Ulysses<\/em> in 1922 by Shakespeare & Company<\/em>\nfor the elevation of the Modernist project on both sides of the Atlantic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ferlinghetti\u2019s\u00a0poetry always was political, in all senses of the word.\u00a0Thus he flipped the notion of populism on his head in his\u00a0Populist\u00a0Manifestos<\/em>, published 1976, when he demanded of poetry to get out there and go populist (First Manifesto):<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the Second Manifesto he\u00a0asks\u00a0the <\/p>\n\n\n\n He here quotes a Mexican poet with\u00a0a\u00a0statement that he throws as a wake-up call at his North American poetic fellow travellers\u00a0to start the fight for a\u00a0political re-envisioning of\u00a0a progressive America. I detect echoes\u00a0here of Percy Bysshe Shelley\u2019s\u00a0dictum (in Defence of Poetry<\/em>, 1821) that \u2018poets are the legislators of the world\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ferlinghetti\u2019s sees poetry as\u00a0an \u2018insurgent art\u2019 (title of a poem of 2007), but he can also speak with a tender and intimate poetic\u00a0voice, privately political, as in\u00a0much of his work, notably in the aforementioned A\u00a0Coney\u00a0Island of\u00a0the Mind<\/em>, for example <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" October 7th is Beat Poetry Day. It marks the anniversary Allen Ginsberg reading his radical poem, ‘Howl’, at the Gallery 6 in San Francisco in 1955. The poet and owner of the City Lights Bookshop (still there to this day, … Continue reading
\u2018Poets, come out of your closets,
Open your\u00a0windows, open your doors,
You have been holed up for too long
in your closed worlds\u2026\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Sons of Whitman\u00a0sons of Poe
Sons of Lorca and Rimbaud
or their dark daughters,\u00a0
poets of another breath
poets of another vision
Who among you\u00a0still speaks of revolution
Who among you still unscrews
the locks\u00a0from\u00a0the doors
in this revisionist decade?
\u201cYou are president of your own body America\u201d\u2019, <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A Coney Island of the Mind #20<\/strong>
\u00a0
The Pennycandystore beyond the El
is where I first
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 fell in love
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 with unreality
Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom
of that september afternoon
A cat upon the counter moved among
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the licorice sticks
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 and tootsie rolls
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 and Oh Boy Gum
\u00a0
Outside the leaves were falling as they died
\u00a0
A wind had blown away the sun
\u00a0
A girl ran in
Her hair was rainy
Her breasts were breathless in the little room
\u00a0
Outside the leaves were falling
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 and they cried
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Too soon! too soon! <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n