The school library went through the stacks and decided to throw away what is considered great books by universal artistic standards to make way for more of what is considered good books by American consumerism standards. I’m not complaining because I get a lot of free books.
One I picked up is Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind. For laymen, Ferlinghetti, along with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, is one of the quintessential Beat generation poets. Although I read a lot of Kerouac in my late teens and loved it, I never got around to Ferlinghetti. It is a thin volume, and the first section is the title’s namesake. He explains that these poems represent “…a kind of circus of the soul.” It is surreal with images of nature, city, absurdity, sex, drunkenness, and beauty with which he questions existence and the poet’s role.
The second section is a collection of poems he improvised for experimental jazz accompaniment. The third section is a collection of poems from his first book, which he decided to reprint in his second book. Why? I’m not sure.
Overall, it’s a good find with several memorable poems and images.
Here’s one that is often anthologized:
Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of the day
performing entrechats
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
and all without mistaking
any thing
for what it may not be
For he’s the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap
And he
a little charleychaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence
Here’s another that is not often anthologized:
See
it was like this when
we waltz into this place
a couple of Papish cats
is doing an Aztec two-step
And I says
Dad let’s cut
but then this dame
comes up behind me see
and says
You and me could really exist
Wow I says
Only the next day
she has bad teeth
and really hates
poetry
