NYT Writes Ferlinghetti's 'Beat Goes On'

For the New York Times's Book Review section, Jeff Gordinier reviews a new selection of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's poems, compiled by Nancy J. Peters and published by New Directions. "Unscientific polling over the years has led me to believe that Ferlinghetti (like E. E. Cummings and Charles Bukowski) used to be something of a gateway poet for young people in America, and a residue of nostalgic fondness remains even for those readers who have moved on to ostensibly more sophisticated stuff. (If you’re looking for a contemporary analogy, one can hope that thousands of Rupi Kaur fans will eventually find their way to, say, Louise Glück and Nikky Finney.)" Gordinier explains. Let's pick up there: 

Whenever I’m visiting San Francisco, I still make a pilgrimage to City Lights, the North Beach bookstore, founded by Ferlinghetti, that stands as a kind of Plymouth Rock for American poetry and progressive thought.

But how does Ferlinghetti’s work hold up now? (Ferlinghetti himself has held up well. At press time, he is still alive and nearing his 99th birthday.) As a publisher, a patron of the arts and a free-speech pioneer, he has been rightly celebrated for decades; he played a crucial role in the defense of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” even winning an obscenity case for daring to publish that zeitgeist-capturing incantation.

Yeah, O.K. — but what about his writing? The release of “Ferlinghetti’s Greatest Poems” (I wish New Directions had gone ahead and called it “Ferlinghetti’s Greatest Hits,” like an album full of ear candy by Tom Petty or Elton John) gives us a chance to revisit that question. It’s a complicated one. Do the quicksilver qualities that can make Ferlinghetti’s poetry so captivating to an adolescent undermine our ability to take it seriously with the passing of years? In his more unfortunate moments, as in the poem called “Underwear,” corny humor lands with a clank and you can’t help wincing: “Underwear can really get you in a bind / Negroes often wear / white underwear / which may lead to trouble.”

It seems self-evident that the passing of years has done “Underwear” no favors. At the same time, it would be churlish to deny that Ferlinghetti has given the popular canon many indelible lines. For a while in the 1950s and 1960s, his voice stood out amid a mounting dissident chorus; in these days of hashtagged political resistance, it is not uncommon to come across portions of his stanzas reconstituted as memes on Instagram and Facebook:

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

Based on passages like that, it’s not much of a stretch to put Ferlinghetti in the company of skilled songwriters. He knows how to craft a hook. His lines have an easy, welcoming flow. (In this book, the poems are arranged chronologically and fluidly, as if they were part of an “Abbey Road”-like symphonic collage or a Hollywood highlight reel.) He has a gift for helping you hear what needs to be said, free of impenetrable filters. 

Read more at the New York Times.