Oct 3 - Junkman's Obbligato - Lawrence Ferlinghetti

[Ruth]

Lawrence Ferlinghetti was born New York, in 1919. In 1953, Ferlinghetti and Peter Martin began to publish City Lights magazine. They also opened the City Lights Books Shop in San Francisco to help support the magazine. In 1955, they launched City Light Publishing, a book-publishing venture.

City Lights became known as the heart of the "Beat" movement, which included writers such as Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac.

Ferlinghetti is the author of more than thirty books of poetry. Though imbued with the commonplace, Ferlinghetti’s poetry is grounded in lyric and narrative traditions.

Among his themes are the beauty of natural world, the tragicomic life of the common man, the plight of the individual in mass society, and the dream and betrayal of democracy.

He counts among his influences T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, E. E. Cummings, H.D., Charles Baudelaire, Jacques Prévert, Guillaume Apollinaire,
Blaise Cendrars. (http://www.absoluteastronomy.com)

This poem comes from Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind which continues to be the most popular poetry book in the U.S. It has been translated into nine languages, and there are nearly 1,000,000 copies in print.

Take a deep breath, you're in for a ride.

Junkman's Obbligato
------lawrence ferlinghetti

Let’s go
Come on
Let’s go
Empty our pockets
And disappear.
Missing all our appointments
And turning up unshaven
Years later
Old cigarette papers
stuck to our pants
leaves in our hair.
Let us not
worry about the payments
anymore.
Let them come
and take it away
whatever it was
we were paying for.
And us with it.
Let us arise and go now
to where dogs do it
Over the Hill
where they keep the earthquakes
behind the city dumps
lost among gasmains and garbage.
Let us see the City Dumps
for what they are.
My country tears of thee.
Let us disappear
in automobile graveyards
and reappear years later
picking rags and newspapers
drying our drawers
on garbage fires
patches on our ass.
Do not bother
to say goodbye
to anyone.
Your missus will not miss us.
Let’s go
smelling of sterno
where the benches are filled
with discarded Bowling Green statues
in the interior dark night
of the flower bowery
our eyes watery
with the contemplation
of empty bottles of muscatel.
Let us recite from broken bibles
on streetcorners
Follow dogs on docks
Speak wild songs
Throw stones
Say anything
Blink at the sun and scratch
and stumble into silence
Diddle in doorways
Know whores thirdhand
after everyone else is finished
Stagger befuddled into East River sunsets
Sleep in phone booths
Puke in pawnshops
wailing for a winter overcoat.
Let us arise and go now
under the city
where ashcans roll
and reappear in putrid clothes
as the uncrowned underground kings
of subway men’s rooms.
Let us feed the pigeons
at the City Hall
urging them to do their duty
in the Mayor’s office.
Hurry up please it’s time.
The end is coming.
Flash floods
Disasters in the sun
Dogs unleashed
Sister in the street
her brassiere backwards.
Let us arise and go now
into the interior dark night
of the soul’s still bowery
and find ourselves anew
where subways stall and wait
under the River.
Cross over
into full puzzlement.
South Ferry will not run forever.
They are cutting out the Bay ferries
but it is still not too late
to get lost in Oakland.
Washington has not yet toppled
from his horse.
There is still time to goose him
and go
leaving our income tax form behind
and our waterproof wristwatch with it
staggering blind after alleycats
under Brooklyn’s Bridge
blown statues in baggy pants
our tincan cries and garbage voices
trailing.
Junk for sale!
Let’s cut it out let’s go
into the real interior of the country
where hockshops reign
mere unblind anarchy upon us.
The end is here
but golf goes on at Burning Tree.
It’s raining it’s pouring
The Ole Man is snoring.
Another flood is coming
Though not the kind you think.
There is still time to sink
and think.\I wish to descend in society.
I wish to make like free.
Swing low sweet chariot.
Let us not wait for the cadillacs
to carry us triumphant
into the interior
waving at the natives
like roman senators in the provinces
wearing poet’s laurels
on lighted brows.
Let us not wait for the write-up
on page one
of the New York Times Book review
images of insane success
smiling from the photo.
By the time they print your picture
in Life Magazine
you will have become a negative anyway
a print with a glossy finish.
They will have come and gotten you
to be famous
and you still will not be free.
Goodbye I’m going.
I’m selling everything
and giving away the rest
to the Good Will Industries.
It will be dark out there
with the Salvation Army Band.
And the mind its own illumination.
Goodbye I’m walking out on the whole scene.
Close down the joint.
The system is all loused up.
Rome was never like this.
I’m tired of waiting for Godot.
I am going where turtles win
I am going
where conmen puke and die
Down the sad esplanades
of the official world.
Junk for sale!
My country tears of thee.
Let us go then you and I
leaving our neckties behind on lampposts
Take up the full beard
of walking anarchy
looking like Walt Whitman
a homemade bomb in the pocket.
I wish to descend in the social scale.
High society is low society.
I am a social climber
climbing downward
And the descent is difficult.
The Upper Middle Class Ideal
is for the birds
but the birds have no use for it
having their own kind of pecking order
based upon birdsong.
Pigeons on the grass alas.
Let us arise and go now
to the Isle of Manisfree.
Let loose the hogs of peace.
Hurry up please it’s time.
Let us arise and go now
into the interior
of Foster’s Cafeteria.
So long Emily Post.
So long
Lowell Thomas.
Goodbye Broadway.
Goodbye Herald Square.
Turn it off.
Confound the system.
Cancel our leases.
Lose the War
without killing anybody.
Let horses scream
and ladies run
to flushless powderrooms.
The end has just begun.
I want to announce it.
Run don’t walk
to the nearest exit.
The real earthquake is coming.
I can feel the building shake.
I am the refined type.
I cannot stand it.
I am going
where asses lie down
with customs collectors who call themselves
literary critics.
My tool is dusty.
My body is hung up too long
in strange suspenders.
Get me a bright bandana
for a jockstrap.
Turn loose and we’ll be off
where sports cars collapse
and the world begins again.
Hurry up please it’s time.
It’s time and a half
and there’s the rub.
The thinkpad makes homeboys of us all.
Let us cut out
into stray eternity.
Somewhere the fields are full of larks.
Somewhere the land is swinging.
My country ‘tis of thee
I’m singing.
Let us arise and go now
to the Isle of Manisfree
and live the true blue simple life
of wisdom and wonderment
where all things grow
straight up
aslant and singing
in the yellow sun
poppies out of cowpods
thinking angels out of turds.
I must arise and go now
to the Isle of Manisfree
way up behind the broken words
and woods of Arcady

[Ruth]

Obbligato: Not to be left out; indispensable. Used of an accompaniment that is an integral part of a piece of music.

[Barbara]

Oh my god, I love Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

[David]

One of my faves. I like the dog poem, too:

The dog trots freely in the street
and sees reality
and the things he sees
are bigger than himself
and the things he sees
are his reality
Drunks in doorways
Moons on trees
The dog trots freely thru the street
and the things he sees
are smaller than himself
Fish on newsprint
Ants in holes
Chickens in Chinatown windows
their heads a block away
The dog trots freely in the street
and the things he smells
smell something like himself
The dog trots freely in the street
past puddles and babies
cats and cigars
poolrooms and policemen
He doesn't hate cops
He merely has no use for them
and he goes past them
and past the dead cows hung up whole
in front of the San Francisco Meat Market
He would rather eat a tender cow
than a tough policeman
though either might do
And he goes past the Romeo Ravioli Factory
and past Coit's Tower
and past Congressman Doyle of the Unamerican Committee
He's afraid of Coit's Tower
but he's not afraid of Congressman Doyle
although what he hears is very discouraging
very depressing
very absurd
to a sad young dog like himself
to a serious dog like himself
But he has his own free world to live in
His own fleas to eat
He will not be muzzled
Congressman Doyle is just another
fire hydrant
to him
The dog trots freely in the street
and has his own dog's life to live
and to think about
and to reflect upon
touching and tasting and testing everything
investigating everything
without benefit of perjury
a real realist
with a real tale to tell
and a real tail to tell it with
a real live
barking
democratic dog
engaged in real
free enterprise
with something to say
about ontology
something to say
about reality
and how to see it
and how to hear it
with his head cocked sideways
at streetcorners
as if he is just about to have
his picture taken
for Victor Records
listening for
His Master's Voice
and looking
like a living questionmark
into the
great gramophone
of puzzling existence
with its wondrous hollow horn
which always seems
just about to spout forth
some Victorious answer
to everything

[Ruth]

Thanks, David, that one's good too. I want to read that aloud at a more leisurely pace. Junkman I want to read aloud, rattling along as fast as I can go, and all in one breath.

[Jim]

For some reason I have a hard time getting with the program. Something about that "angels out of turds" sensibility which ruled the beats and the hippies feels dated and artificial. Maybe I have sold out to The Man.

At least Ferlinghetti gives credit to Yeats, Eliot, and Whitman for some of the his basic structure.

The interesting question to me is whether this or Ginsburg's "Howl" came first. The two poems have a lot in common. Maybe because I know them better, I prefer "Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated" to "angels out of turd".

[Jim]

Re-reading "Howl" I see I have forgotten or never knew how good it is:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix ...

who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht
& tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable
kingdom,

who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for
an egg,

who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot
for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks
fell on their heads every day for the next decade,

who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccess-
fully, gave up and were forced to open antique
stores where they thought they were growing
old and cried

[Barbara]

It certainly is a difference in perspective, isn't it? Ferlinghetti is gleeful; Ginsberg is in the belly of the monster.

[Beej]

Did anyone else catch the Ferlinghetti documentary (perhaps on PBS?) A few months ago? It was comprised mostly of an interview which took place at his rustic, extremely bare, little cabin at Bixby Canyon in CA. Fascinating little film. I looked to see if it was online but all I found was this nifty whimsical trailer:

http://ferlinghettifilm.com/

[Ruth]

Thanks, Beej. I wish I'd known about the documentary. If it was PBS, tho, they'll probably trot it out again sometime.

[Mary Ellen]

My uneducated response to this poem is "Huh?" I need someone to explain its brilliance to me, though this might be one of those "if you have to ask, you'll never get it" kind of things.

I preferred the dog poem and particularly enjoyed the lines:

Congressman Doyle is just another
fire hydrant
to him.

Maybe I prefer the dog poem to the Junkman poem because I think it makes its point in a way that has more integrity. Both say, to me, that all the things and positions that we all make such a fuss over are really nothing. (A worthwhil point, certainly, and much ink has been spilt making it.) Truly, the dog doesn't think much of any of them, as he goes about his doggy agenda. That's real. Dogs don't.

But the "let's toss it all away and live like homeless people," as if there were some great liberation in being cold and hungry and ill, as if REAL homeless people woke up one day and said, "to hell with all this. I will no longer serve The Man. [tx, Jim:] I'll live under a bridge and become a squeegee guy and laugh at the disdain of society because I think the bourgeous values of society are degrading and dishonest," well, maybe Lawrence knew such homeless people. But the homeless people I know and have known did not have the choice -- shall I be a poet with my own little bookstore and adoring acolytes, or a homeless guy on the street in my noisome clothes and sores on my feet. Nope, they did not. Which is a long way of saying, the poem just doesn't seem real to me.

But maybe my reading is completely off base. As I said, I need to be educated!

Meaning aside, I do love the loose, playful way of both poems, the toying with words, the bricollage (sp?) for fun attitude. The clever use of "pigeons on the grass alas."


Mary Ellen

[Ruth]

You bring up a good point, Mary Ellen. I was struck by the Junkman poem because I was sucked into its sheer exuberance, its celebration of things usually uncelebrated, its disdain for propriety. It didn't cross my mind that he was serious. If he was, then your points are absolutely valid. Does anybody more familiar with Ferlinghetti know?

[Mary Ellen]

Ruth, I agree he probably was not serious, or would not expect to be taken seriously. (Who would take him up on it?!) I guess I over-thought my response, for I also agree about the exuberance of the poem. Perhaps I was actually reacting to myself as much as to the poem: my being swept up in the exuberance, the celebration of things that, in real-life terms, are misery to experience.

Mary Ellen

[David]

"Junkman's Obbligato" to some extent romanticizes poverty, but in both the western and eastern traditions, voluntary poverty has been seen as a road to a kind of freedom. Consider the cynics, Christian and Buddhist monastics.

There is also a picaresque sensibility very much present in "Junkman," going back to the Lazarillo de Tormes and beyond to Apuleius's Golden Ass, for example.

Certainly the notion of the enslaving quality of possessions is not a new one.

I like Ferlinghetti because he's madcap rather than mad, cheerfully anarchistic rather than demoniac. Witty:

"helicopters from Helios
flew over us
dropping free railway tickets
from Lost Angeles to heaven
promising free elections
* * * *
shortly after reaching
the strange suburban shores
of that great American demi-democracy
looked at each other
with a mild surprise
silent upon a peak
in Darien"

[Jim]

To me the "Obbligato" is a prelude to the whole hippie mystique of a decade later when some took the notion of chucking it all and living where Man is Free! seriously.

The arguments for and against that sentiment obviously go back for centuries. Maybe what puts me off is Ferlinghetti's happy exuberance at the thought when, like Mary Ellen, I see the drawbacks to the idea.

I'm going to try an get my soul free
We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

as Joni Mitchell and I like to say. At the moment I still feel a little chained down.

[Beej]

But Jim, take into account, in Kris Kristofferson's words:

"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."

[Jim]

Hi Mary Ellen,

Brilliant poet aside, which can be argued from either the positive or negative side, Junkman's Obbligato wasn't an original idea. It's translation to the page was, but the idea itself is a spoof, imitation, homage, depending on the way you read it, to the famouse Yeats poem written in 1892:

THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE
By William Butler Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear the water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

Many writers and social critics of every generation have sought the romantic possibilities of escaping form, structure, tradition, and order without considering the consequences.

Along with that, Obbligato was written to be accompanied by jazz music in the old 1950's coffeehouse traditions of San Francisco. Ferlinghetti is, first and foremost, a beatnik philosophically and poetically, He believes in spontaneity and freedom from authoritarian rule. In his poetry and prose, like the others of this movement, this sometimes translates into "first word, best word" rather than "best word, best order," which can make a poem seem exhuberant and fresh one minute and sloppy the next. As with many of the beat writers, Ginsberg, Keruoac, Burroughs, Corso, Snyder, etc. he never seems to have evolved or grown much past that initial phase in style. To me, and this is just my opinion, Ferlinghetti and the others made an invaluable contribution to contemporary American poetry by freeing up the language and by being willing to write about what had been taboo subjects before their time. But, once I read huge amounts of their works, I was able to move on without wanting to return in search of something I missed. Junkman's Obbligato comes from a collection of poems by Ferlinghetti called "A Coney Island of the Mind" and the title is accurate. It's a playful, anti-establishment work written over fifty years ago. What's notable, I think, is that after writing around thirty more books, it's still his most popular and probably, his best.

[Mary Ellen]

Jim, thanks for the good points and background on Ferlinghetti. Doubtless, were I familiar with cottage life in Innisfree 100+ years ago, I would think Yeats half-cracked in his daydream of escape!

David: "in both the western and eastern traditions, voluntary poverty has been seen as a road to a kind of freedom. Consider the cynics, Christian and Buddhist monastics. " Yes, I'm aware of the tradition, particularly the Christian version: the Desert Fathers (& mothers!), Francis, etc., etc. But I don't think any of them considered it such a lark, in the way that Ferlinghetti spins it out. In the Christian tradition (not able to speak to the others), there is a current of asceticism, of self-abnegation, in the choice of voluntary poverty, which I don't read into Ferlinghetti's poem.

Mary Ellen

[David]

That's true, Mary Ellen, although there have always been "fools for Christ," too.

In Ferlinghetti there is the picaresque element, which is very strong.

No one who reads the Desert Fathers, or the The Philokalia The Complete Text, is likely to think voluntary poverty and all that goes with it, is a lark or in itself a problem-solver.

But still, it's a recurrent fantasy that has some truth in it:

Salutation

O generation of the thoroughly smug
and thoroughly uncomfortable,
I have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun,
I have seen them with untidy families,
I have seen their smiles full of teeth
and heard ungainly laughter.
And I am happier than you are,
And they were happier than I am;
And the fish swim in the lake
and do not even own clothing.

[Jim]

Cottage life in Innisfree? You can start with this these photos, Mary Ellen.

http://www.donegalthatchcottages.com/...

According to the description: "Innisfree Island lies off-shore from Maghery and is accessed from Burtonport. It is a flat island measuring about three quarters of a mile in diameter. It came to fame in the seventies and eighties when a group of hippies known as “Screamers” went to live there and spent close on twenty years on the island before heading off for South America. Unlike Owey and Gola Innisfree never became completely deserted. It seemed to attract a certain kind of alternative lifestyle and was always likely to be home to a German or English family. Peader O’Donnell, who wrote “Islanders” was once the schoolmaster on Innisfree and preserved the island way of life for posterity in his famous novel. Today there is mains water and electricity on Innisfree making like somewhat easier. In recent years the island has hosted a very successful Arts Festival. Although there is no regular ferry service to Innisfree it is often quite possible to get passage on one of the many small craft that ply between Burtonport and Innisfree during the summer months. Prepare to be met by island cattle walking on the beach."

Sounds isolated but looks nice when the sun shines.

Also of interest is that Innisfree is where John Wayne goes to meet Maueeen O'hara in The Quiet Man. This turns out to be a fictional town unrelated to the Isle, but it gave rise to this website:

http://www.destinationhollywood.com/m...

Here you can hear one of the Celtic women play her harp and sing a later song to wonders of Innisfree and watch Yeats read his poem.

Aren't you glad you asked?

[Harley]

My two favorite Ferlinghetti poems are: Underwear and Christ Climbed Down. Here are few lines from Underwear:

"There won't be no real revolution
And poetry still the underwear of the soul
And underwear still covering
a multitude of faults
in the geological sense —
strange sedimentary stones and inscrutable cracks!"

[Jim]

Something is appealing about poetry being the underwear of the soul, Harley. Thanks for posting this.

[Mary Ellen]

David: you bring up an important point. Certainly St. Francis is known for being joyful as well as poor.

Jim: those cottages look great. I wouldn't mind a little time in them myself, with central heat AND a turf fire....

[Gail]

Well, ya learn somethin' every day. I thought I hated the Beat Poets.

Not anymore.

What I loved here was Ferlinghetti's wily use of the common phrase (ex: Walk to the nearest exit) in bizarre and inverted fashion. It really made the poem fun for me. And many thanks to those (Mary Ellen, David, Jim) discussing the "poverty as path to enlightenment" references, as it would have taken me some little time to get to that on my own. I saw the Yeats ref. immediately and for about two lines thought "Who the hell do you think you are?" as I'm a fan of Yeats. But Ferlinghetti did a great job here.n The dog poem is exccellent as well.

Of course, I'm still trying to appreciate Ginsberg. His charms escape me for the present.

[Jim]

If you get past "Howl" Ginsberg can be as light-hearted as Ferlinghetti. My favorite may be "Supermarket in Calfornia" which starts:

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whit-
man, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees
with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images,
I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of
your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole fam-
ilies shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives
in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you,
García Lorca, what were you doing down by the
watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old
grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator
and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed
the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my
Angel?

What attracts me to him is that he sees the way a bohemian life painfully separates you from the world. Instead of living

the true blue simple life
of wisdom and wonderment
where all things grow
straight up
aslant and singing
in the yellow sun

the bohemians are those who

who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht
& tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable
kingdom

For Ferlinghetti the beat life seems to be a happy choice; for Ginsburg it is serious fate. Of course, my favorite beat is Gary Snyder who doesn't bother about choosing. He is simply there.

[Gail]

Obviously I need to study up on this movement. I like "Supermarket in California"; thanks Jim. It must have been "Howl" that put me off so much. While I like poetry that has meaning and is serious, I don't like to be bludgeoned by the poet.

[Patrick]

whoops there Jim ... your source/reference to Yeat's Isle of Innisfree is wrong.

As an adult, Yeats often yearned for the quiet life in County Sligo, where he spent many boyhood days at Innisfree island on Lough (Lake) Gill. His carefree days there--along with American writer Henry David Thoreau's account of his experiences at Walden Pond--inspired Yeats to write "The Lake Isle of Innisfree." The island is less than two miles southeast of the town of Sligo, the county seat. The lake is between five and six miles long and between one and one-and-a-half miles wide. A few miles to the west is Donegal Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. Yeats is buried in Drumcliff, County Sligo.


Regards, Patrick