"Poetry Can Save the World..." in today's SF Chronicle

[Shepherd]

Today's SF Chronicle has a book review titled "Poetry Can Save the World, Says Ferlinghetti," which follows. It is about his new book "Poetry as Insurgent Art." The question "Can Poetry Matter?" has long interested poets. The review concludes with Ferlinghetti's words, "Wake up, the world's on fire."

"Adreinne Rich Makes Music of Words" appears at its side, about the great feminist's new book of poems. The link follows:
https://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/artic...DTL&type=books
Shepherd

Ferlinghetti argues that poetry can save the world, Steve Heilig
Sunday, December 30, 2007
?
Poetry as Insurgent Art, By Lawrence Ferlinghett
NEW DIRECTIONS; 90 PAGES; $12.9

What is the "use" of poetry? Or, as more than one author has asked, Can Poetry Matter?

More than 50 years ago, renowned American poet William Carlos Williams wrote famously that "It is difficult/ to get the news from poems/ yet men die miserably every day/ for lack/ of what is found there."

A practical man who was not only a poet but also a practicing physician, Williams' lines are usually read to imply that poetry - good poetry, at least - is essential to one's inner life and spirit. In the cultural doldrums of the early 1950s, that rang true for many people.

Around the same time Williams wrote those lines, Lawrence Ferlinghetti arrived in San Francisco, fresh from Paris with a doctorate from the Sorbonne and a love of the printed word. He soon co-founded the landmark and still-thriving City Lights Bookstore and publishers, issuing not only his own work but also the first printing of Allen Ginsberg's iconic poem "Howl" and many other works by writers who became known as Beat and others. Ferlinghetti has been poet laureate of San Francisco, received numerous awards both literary and civic, had his paintings widely exhibited and printed and, nearing 90 years of age, is about as famous as a poet can be in these times.

In other words, Ferlinghetti should need no introduction. That he still might, to the vast majority of Americans who rarely, if ever, read poetry, is part of the lamentable background to his latest book. It has been argued that the current decade is the 1950s all over again, but worse. And for Ferlinghetti, poetry's "use" extends far beyond the personal into the political. "Poetry can save the world by transforming consciousness," he argues in "Poetry as Insurgent Art," a slim hardback pocketbook manifesto of prose epigrams, seemingly addressed to poets and those who might be.

"I am signaling you through the flames," he begins in the new section from which his book takes its title. "The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it." Poetry, in this vision, must be a political statement, arrows slung for freedom of expression, thought and resistance. "Write living newspapers," he counsels. "Your poems must be more than want ads for broken hearts" - in other words, to paraphrase Bertolt Brecht, to write mere "love poetry" in such times is "almost a crime." So "challenge capitalism masquerading as democracy"; "Liberate have-nots and enrage despots"; "Don't cater to the Middle Mind of America nor to consumer society." And so on, in variations of his admonition to "be committed to something outside yourself."

This is a tall order for poetry, to be sure. But the six or seven (mostly) one-liners on each of the 30 pages are testament to Ferlinghetti's enduring vision and commitment. Some of these lines read as if they could have been penned in the Beat heyday, decades ago: "Stand up for the stupid and crazy"; "Dig folksingers who are the true singing poets of yesterday and today." Political economy, down-home mysticisms, and occasional cringe-worthy silliness ("Make permanent waves, and not just on the heads of stylish women") all blend into his own version of Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet." Thus, poets should "see eternity in the eyes of animals," but not "be too arcane for the man in the street." Ferlinghetti can be self-deprecating: "Don't lecture like this. Don't say don't." But he is also dead serious: "Don't let them tell you poetry is bull-" and, especially, "Don't ever believe poetry is irrelevant in dark times." Indeed, as Williams would probably agree, in dark times and in this vision, poetry becomes even more essential.

The second major section of the book, "What Is Poetry?," was started by Ferlinghetti in the late 1950s; here he provides backup for his argument for the importance of poetry, and that "life lived with poetry in mind is itself an art." Here, the political returns - somewhat - to the personal, as "poetry is the shortest distance between two humans," is "the anarchy of the senses making sense"; and "it is a pulsing fragment of the inner life, an untethered music" which "restores wonder and innocence."

Again, a lofty charge, but many have believed it, and some, such as Ferlinghetti, have lived it - even though, as he acidly quips (echoing Ginsberg's famed opening lines to "Howl") in "The Populist Manifesto" appended here, "We have seen the best minds of our generation/ destroyed by boredom at poetry readings."

This impassioned, compact and concise little book won't destroy any minds. But it may stoke some hearts, as Ferlinghetti intends. Long may he add to his poetic warning: "Wake up, the world's on fire!" {sbox}

Steve Heilig is a writer, editor and public health advocate in San Francisco, a frequent book critic and a music critic for the Beat magazine.

https://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c.../RVLRU031F.DTL
This article appeared on page M - 3 of the San*Francisco*Chronicle

[Clancy]

...More than 50 years ago, renowned American poet William Carlos Williams wrote famously that "It is difficult/ to get the news from poems/ yet men die miserably every day/ for lack/ of what is found there."

"I am signaling you through the flames," he (Ferlinghetti) begins "The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it." Poetry, in this vision, must be a political statement, arrows slung for freedom of expression, thought and resistance. "Write living newspapers," he counsels. "Your poems must be more than want ads for broken hearts" - in other words, to paraphrase Bertolt Brecht, to write mere "love poetry" in such times is "almost a crime."

Revolutionary poetry is alive and well in the lyrics of song. Ferlinghetti might like this one;

And They Call it Democracy by Bruce Cockburn

Padded with power here they come
International loan sharks backed by the guns
Of market hungry military profiteers
Whose word is a swamp and whose brow is smeared
With the blood of the poor

Who rob life of its quality
Who render rage a necessity
By turning countries into labour camps
Modern slavers in drag as champions of freedom

Sinister cynical instrument
Who makes the gun into a sacrament --
The only response to the deification
Of tyranny by so-called "developed" nations
Idolatry of ideology

North South East West
Kill the best and buy the rest
It's just spend a buck to make a buck
You don't really give a flying fuck
About the people in misery

IMF dirty MF
Takes away everything it can get
Always making certain that there's one thing left
Keep them on the hook with insupportable debt

See the paid-off local bottom feeders
Passing themselves off as leaders
Kiss the ladies shake hands with the fellows
Open for business like a cheap bordello

And they call it democracy

See the loaded eyes of the children too
Trying to make the best of it the way kids do
One day you're going to rise from your habitual feast
To find yourself staring down the throat of the beast
They call the revolution

------------------------------------------------------------------

'Mere' love poetry can be revolutionary too;

Higher Ground by Vanessa Williams

Walk me over this horizon
Let the sun's light warm my face
Once again the times are changing
Once again I've lost my way

While the words of ancient poets
Fall like dust upon my shoes
Greed has grabbed me of my vision
Turned my heart from higher truths

So take my hand and lift me higher
Be my love and my desire
Hold me safe, in honor bound
Take my heart to higher ground

I have walked too long in darkness
I have walked too long alone
Blindly clutching fists of diamonds
that I found were only stones
I would trade the wealth of ages
for a warmer hand to hold
Though the path of life is narrow
But it leads to streets of gold

So take my hand and lift me higher
Be my love and my desire
Hold me safe, in honor bound
Take my heart to higher ground

In this world we move through shadows
Never sure of what we see
While the truth abides between us
Come and share the truth with me

["Mad" Miles]

Children of Darkness


(E) C F C / C F C / C Am / Dm G / C F C / C F C

Now is the time for your loving, dear,
And the time for your company
Now when the light of reason fails
And fires burn on the sea
Now in this age of confusion
I have need for your company.

It's once I was free to go roaming in
The wind of the springtime mind
It's once the clouds I sailed upon
Were sweet as lilac wine
So why are the breezes of summer, dear
Enlaced with a grim design?

And where was the will of my father when
We raised our swords on high?
And where was my mother's wailing when
Our flags were justified?
And where will we take our pleasures when
Our bodies have been denied?

For I am a wild and a lonely child
And the child of an angry man
Now with the high wars raging
I would offer you my hand
For we are the children of darkness
And the prey of a proud, proud land.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Words and music by Richard Farina, copyright Whitmark and Sons.

Recorded on Richard and Mimi's Reflections of a Crystal Wind
album.

https://sniff.numachi.com/~rickheit/...tiDARKCHD.html

https://www.richardandmimi.com/index.html