Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
123rd out of 134 books
—
71 voters
Poetry as Insurgent Art
In 1953 Lawrence Ferlinghetti founded the first paperback bookstore in the United States. In over five decades City Lights, the bookstore and publisher, has become a Mecca for millions. Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind (ND, 1958) is a number one best-selling volume of poetry by any living American poet. Now, New Directions is proud to publish his manifesto in a pa...more
Hardcover, 90 pages
Published
September 17th 2007
by New Directions
(first published September 1st 2007)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
503)
Part desiderata, part manifesto, this quotable book is a prose poem about the importance of poetry. In four prose poems and a brief essay, its quips vary from rebellious: “Strive to change the world in such a way that there’s no further need to be a dissident”; to patently Ferlinghetti comparisons to classic art and canonic literature: “Poetry can be heard at manholes, echoing up Dante’s fire escape; to koan-like statements. Also, there are lots of birds. For anyone who needs to be convinced of...more
I really wanted to like this book. I loved "A Coney Island of the Mind." It starts as a bunch of short lines about poetry in general. Some of which are interesting at even at times beautiful. The lines are much like what Jack Kerouac describes as tics. I found myself earmarking a few of the Ferlinghetti lines early on and toward the middle of the short collection. Then I found many lines which actually made me mad and that seemed hypocritical. I suppose the book was a success for Ferlinghetti as...more
I picked this up on a whim today, and I'm glad I did. While I don't go out of my way to read Beat poets, I've been a fan of Ferlinghetti since I read a poem of his in a copy a teacher handed out in high school. This particular collection contains four poems and a prose piece; the first two poems are new or new-ish, and the last two poems are from the 1970s. The prose piece also is from 1978 and is a critique of current poetry (which I daresay Ferlinghetti still holds to be true considering its i...more
Ferlinghetti is more the friend of many poets than he is a poet. He's the Santa Claus of poets, this jolly white-haired fellow, loving the good poets and hating the bad ones, and this little book is the friend of poetry. As the friend of poets and as Santa Claus and as a writer about poetry, he excels with a series of epigrammatic, witty quotables: "Poetry like love a natural painkiller. The label on the bottle says, "Restores wonder and innocence."
It's better stuff than his own poetry, which is...more
It's better stuff than his own poetry, which is...more
i will not walk this path with you
Ferlinghetti,
i will not swallow
your self-aware self-
important sense of self-
worth as you swear in so many words
the world will be saved by poetry.
and i spent summers in sweltering
coffeehouses with cigarette smoke
dense and packed as the words
of amateur after amateur patting the backs
of other amateurs in an amateur display of
"we are poet, hear us roar,"
but i will not swallow this splenda-made sweetness
that poetry is saving the world.
i won't swallow that kool-aid.
i...more
Ferlinghetti,
i will not swallow
your self-aware self-
important sense of self-
worth as you swear in so many words
the world will be saved by poetry.
and i spent summers in sweltering
coffeehouses with cigarette smoke
dense and packed as the words
of amateur after amateur patting the backs
of other amateurs in an amateur display of
"we are poet, hear us roar,"
but i will not swallow this splenda-made sweetness
that poetry is saving the world.
i won't swallow that kool-aid.
i...more
28 likes · like · see review
view all 19 comments
Mar 13, 2008
Michelle
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Jon
Shelves:
poetry,
teeny-tiny-books
Just a little teeny tiny book (honestly--it could fit in your pocket) just full of little inspiring quips about the meaning of poetry. This little tome also includes "Populist Manifesto I and II"...It's full of activism and fire. "Poets come out of your closets..." This is like some cappucino for the creative world. Wake up!
I have read this book over and over and over. You can tell, because I have underlined, highlighted, and written in the margins in about four different colors at this point. This is easily one of my most beloved books. Every time I pick it up, I end up losing myself in it. Someday, I will get a Ferlinghetti tattoo and it will be wonderful.
Perhaps the most wonderful part of this is how much my students responded to the excerpts I had them read. For the most part, they loved it, and a lot of them a...more
Perhaps the most wonderful part of this is how much my students responded to the excerpts I had them read. For the most part, they loved it, and a lot of them a...more
Love this:
"Have you heard the sound of the ocean
lately
the sound by which daily
the stars still are driven
the sound by which nightly
the stars retake their sky
The sea thunders still to remind you
of the thunder in your blood
to remind you of your selves
Think now of your self
as of a distant ship
Think now of your beloved
of the eyes of your beloved
whoever is most beloved
he who held you hard in the dark
or she who washed her hair by the
waterfall
whoever makes the heart pound
the blood pound
Listen says the...more
"Have you heard the sound of the ocean
lately
the sound by which daily
the stars still are driven
the sound by which nightly
the stars retake their sky
The sea thunders still to remind you
of the thunder in your blood
to remind you of your selves
Think now of your self
as of a distant ship
Think now of your beloved
of the eyes of your beloved
whoever is most beloved
he who held you hard in the dark
or she who washed her hair by the
waterfall
whoever makes the heart pound
the blood pound
Listen says the...more
When I saw Lawrence Ferlinghetti at the Y, I tried to make a memory that included every single sound he uttered. I found Poetry As Insurgent Art on the poetry shelf at the library, and it all came flooding back to me. The book is tiny. It fits in a pocket. It has short thoughts about what poetry is. The thoughts have been developed over many years. It's simple. It's stunning. It's truth. It makes you think in short sentences, too. It's still in progress. It's ironic. It's funny. It's sad. It's s...more
Some interesting ideas and small gems in this book, but overall I was not particularly impressed. A lot of it reads like plain old stoner hippy rambling, which I have enough of in my life already. I was also annoyed by how much it was geared toward white American males. It undermined Ferlinghetti's otherwise successful attempt to be a call-to-arms. Er...a call-to-pens? Eh. Sorry.
His views on prose-as-poetry are interesting, though I disagree with them. He lambasts the calling of certain works "p...more
His views on prose-as-poetry are interesting, though I disagree with them. He lambasts the calling of certain works "p...more
The book is several manifestos stitched together, Ferlinghetti's work in progress. The first two sections, "Poetry as Insurgent Art" and "What is Poetry?" are poetic lists of imperative statements. For me, these are hit-or-miss; the hits are comfort food for poets or heart-stopping leaps of metaphor; the misses are clichés or annoying puns.
The book is irresistibly quotable.
Now, the manifestos that follow (written in the '70s) are watered-down Ginsberg to me. A sad thing. These make Ferlinghetti'...more
The book is irresistibly quotable.
Now, the manifestos that follow (written in the '70s) are watered-down Ginsberg to me. A sad thing. These make Ferlinghetti'...more
Jul 19, 2008
Ron Irvine
added it
Isn't it time for the poets, the prophets, the common folk of America with vision and hope to step up and speak out???In a review of Ferlinghetti's book, the San Francisco Chronicle article states:"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 newsp...more
so i just picked up ferlinghetti's latest book, poetry as insurgent art 2007 New Directions clothbound, at left bank books. the price was low, 12.95 for a first pressing hardback poetry book, and the size is in line with ferlinghetti's pocket poets collection he publishes under city lights. i am not sure what i was expecting, as i am never sure what to expect with ferlinghetti's work. he has made it all. poems, plays, journals, paintings, drawings, novels, and i have consumed most with the fervo...more
My friend got me this for my birthday or Christmas. They're so close together it probably doesn't matter which. Unfortunately, after I started reading this, I lost it. It's the size of my hand and it was pretty easy to misplace. I found it last night in a fit of cleaning and finished reading it.
"From the groundbreaking (and betselling) A Coney Island of the Mind in 1958 to the "personal epic" of Americus, Book I in 2003, Lawrence Ferlinghetti has, in more than thirty books, been the poetic consc...more
"From the groundbreaking (and betselling) A Coney Island of the Mind in 1958 to the "personal epic" of Americus, Book I in 2003, Lawrence Ferlinghetti has, in more than thirty books, been the poetic consc...more
-
Poetry the common carrier
for the transportation of the public
to higher places
than other wheels can carry it.
Poetry still falls from the skies
into our streets still open.
They haven’t put up the barricades, yet,
the streets still alive with faces,
lovely men & women still walking there,
still lovely creatures everywhere,
in the eyes of all the secret of all
still buried there,
Whitman’s wild children still sleeping there,
Awake and walk in the open air.
Poetry the common carrier
for the transportation of the public
to higher places
than other wheels can carry it.
Poetry still falls from the skies
into our streets still open.
They haven’t put up the barricades, yet,
the streets still alive with faces,
lovely men & women still walking there,
still lovely creatures everywhere,
in the eyes of all the secret of all
still buried there,
Whitman’s wild children still sleeping there,
Awake and walk in the open air.
I've read it before but like it now even more. Short lines, some not so good to me, but others great. 5 fives because short lines mean the ones that don't stick...don't stick.
"Mistrust metaphysics, trust in the imagination and re-fertilize it.
Instead of trying to escape reality, plunge into the flesh of the world.
If you call yourself a poet, sing it, don't state it."
Just because it's poetry doesn't mean it has to be monotone!
watch out for poets on the loose
"Mistrust metaphysics, trust in the imagination and re-fertilize it.
Instead of trying to escape reality, plunge into the flesh of the world.
If you call yourself a poet, sing it, don't state it."
Just because it's poetry doesn't mean it has to be monotone!
watch out for poets on the loose
This short manifesto mediates on the political purpose of poetry. I read it out loud and enjoyed it. The first poem was the best. I found the second poem containing fewer lines over which I paused and perhaps too repetitious of the first. The populist manifestos at the end of the work were great.
Quite simply, Ferlinghetti's work-in-progress (I look forward to future iterations) reconjures out of the doldrums the essence and power of poetry. And five years down the line from the edition I have, his words have never been more relevant or incendiary.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is a great mind at work - his influence on American literature is often overlooked. This is a short work-in-progress of thought snippets about art and poetry. Lovely words and inspirational to no end.
A quick, inspiring read.
Loved lines like:
Secretly liberate any being you see in a cage.
Be a wolf in a sheepfold of silence.
Laugh at those who tell you, 'Go prose, young man, go prose.'
Like a field of sunflowers, a poem should not have to be explained.
Compose on the tongue, not on the page.
Consider Sufism.
What is poetry? "Love lie with me / and I will tell."
Loved lines like:
Secretly liberate any being you see in a cage.
Be a wolf in a sheepfold of silence.
Laugh at those who tell you, 'Go prose, young man, go prose.'
Like a field of sunflowers, a poem should not have to be explained.
Compose on the tongue, not on the page.
Consider Sufism.
What is poetry? "Love lie with me / and I will tell."
I'm loving the series of aphorisms in the title piece among this small anthology of work from 1975 to present.
Quoting, "Haunt bookstores."
Quoting, "Haunt bookstores."
This book is like "chicken soup" for a poets soul. It definitely will reinvigorate your inner Poetarian .
Inspiring, daring, challenging. "Create your own reality...camp on the shore of reality."
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
I was at City Lights this past weekend and felt compelled to grab this off the display and buy it at the last minute. I am so very glad I did. It is the kind of poetry that leaves me completely stunned after reading. In other words, very good.
my inner seventeen year old totally reveled in reading this book.
This book is conveniently sized. Carry it in your pocket always.
Loved every word; to be read over ad over again...
Must read if you love poetry
Favorite poetry book ever.
Inspiring.
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
A prominent voice of the wide-open poetry movement that began in the 1950s, Lawrence Ferlinghetti has written poetry, translation, fiction, theater, art criticism, film narration, and essays. Often concerned with politics and social issues, Ferlinghetti’s poetry countered the literary elite's definition of art and the artist's role in the world. Though imbued with the commonplace, his poetry canno...more
More about Lawrence Ferlinghetti...
Share This Book
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
“Poetry is a naked woman, a naked man, and the distance between them.”
—
88 people liked it
More quotes…
