Celebrating Ferlinghetti upon his 99th birthday
San Francisco icon Lawrence Ferlinghetti turns 99 March 24. His list of achievements — as a publisher and owner of City Lights bookstore, as a poet, painter and extraordinary citizen — could span the length of this page. He is one of the few American poets whose life’s work has been recognized both regionally and internationally.
In some sense, Ferlinghetti is the root source of this poetry column. Since the beginning of his writing life, he has promoted the idea that art and civic responsibility are not mutually exclusive. Many of the poets we’ve featured in State Lines carry the torch Ferlinghetti lit when he began writing and publishing in the 1950s. This includes the first poet we showcased, former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, as well as a new generation: Chinaka Hodge, Barbara Jane Reyes and Tongo Eisen-Martin. It’s not a coincidence that these four poets published their most recent books with Ferlinghetti’s City Lights imprint.
Before the Beat movement of the 1950s and ’60s, American poetry was under the spell of cool, intellectual projects from poets like T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and Wallace Stevens. These writers often relied on persona, instead of personality, to express themselves. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is our most familiar example in this mode: “I grow old ... I grow old ... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”
Ferlinghetti’s second book, “A Coney Island of the Mind,” became a literary smash hit largely because he rejected the aesthetics of modern predecessors like Eliot. A million copies of the book have been printed since 1958. Much of the book’s success is related to Ferlinghetti’s authentic, outspoken voice. He’s not afraid to wear his politics. He expresses his feelings openly and in a common idiom.
Early poems like “I Am Waiting” illustrate Ferlinghetti’s skill at balancing the lyrical with the political, the tragic with the comic. The poem’s first line, “I am waiting for my case to come up,” refers to the famous San Francisco obscenity trial of 1957 involving Ferlinghetti and City Lights publishing. Ferlinghetti had been arrested for distributing Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl and Other Poems” as part of the press’ Pocket Poets series. But that is merely the poem’s launch point. Ferlinghetti goes on to criticize America during the Eisenhower years as it drifts toward consumerism and imperialism. In his free-verse style, reminiscent of jazz, Ferlinghetti decries the nation’s religious exceptionalism, racism in the South, historical treatment of native tribes, and abuse of the natural world. Despite the frustration he expresses, there’s a fair share of humor here, too, especially in the second stanza, where the poet waits for patently absurd things to happen: “for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored” and “for the Last Supper to be served again / with a strange new appetizer.”
Ferlinghetti was a trailblazer. He still is. New Directions recently published a new volume of his work, “Ferlinghetti’s Greatest Poems.” The book is a breezy read. And inspiring because it shows a poet’s imaginative power waxing into the 10th decade of his life. Even if you don’t read a lot of poetry, this is a book you want to keep at the ready. You’ll need it some day, as it contains all sorts of spiritual nourishment we typically seek in poetry.
I Am Waiting
I am waiting for my case to come up and I am waiting for a rebirth of wonder and I am waiting for someone to really discover America and wail and I am waiting for the discovery of a new symbolic western frontier and I am waiting for the American Eagle to really spread its wings and straighten up and fly right and I am waiting for the Age of Anxiety to drop dead and I am waiting for the war to be fought which will make the world safe for anarchy and I am waiting for the final withering away of all governments and I am perpetually awaiting a rebirth of wonder I am waiting for the Second Coming and I am waiting for a religious revival to sweep thru the state of Arizona and I am waiting for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored and I am waiting for them to prove that God is really American and I am waiting to see God on television piped onto church altars if only they can find the right channel to tune in on and I am waiting for the Last Supper to be served again with a strange new appetizer and I am perpetually awaiting a rebirth of wonder
“I Am Waiting,” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, from “A Coney Island of the Mind,” copyright © 1958 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is the co-founder of City Lights. His collection “A Coney Island of the Mind” is one of the best-selling volumes of poetry by any living American poet. He lives in San Francisco.