Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Books

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e_dog
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Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Books

Post by e_dog » September 3rd, 2007, 12:05 pm

I don't think 'Therefore, I am.' Therefore, I am.

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Post by stilltrucking » September 3rd, 2007, 6:43 pm

AMY GOODMAN: Fifty years ago this week, Viking Press published Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road. The book was an immediate hit and remains one of the key works of the Beat Generation. On the Road was a fictionalized account of Kerouac’s travels across the country in the late 1940s. He originally wrote the book over a three-week stretch in the early 1950s. Kerouac typed it on a scroll, single-spaced with no margins or paragraph breaks.
That's a good story but not true.


But Kerouac's brother-in-law and executor, John Sampas, says the three-week story is a kind of self-created myth. "Three weeks" is what Kerouac answered when talk-show host Steve Allen asked how long it took to write On the Road.
"And so this gave the impression that Jack just spontaneously wrote this book in three weeks," Sampas says. "I think what Jack should've said was, 'I typed it up in three weeks.'"
Kerouac scholar Paul Marion agrees.
"Kerouac cultivated this myth that he was this spontaneous prose man, and that everything that he ever put down was never changed, and that's not true," Marion says. "He was really a supreme craftsman, and devoted to writing and the writing process."
In truth, Marion says, Kerouac heavily reworked On the Road — first in his head, then in his journals between 1947 and 1949, and then again on his typewriter.
Between 1951 and 1957, Kerouac tinkered with as many as six drafts in a desperate attempt to get editors to accept his work, according to Sampas.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... d=11709924

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Post by Doreen Peri » September 3rd, 2007, 8:27 pm

I clicked to listen to the mp3 and got 5 min into it.. it was a news report... never got to anything about ferlinghetti.

hmmm

?

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Post by stilltrucking » September 3rd, 2007, 11:20 pm

I did not listen I read, maybe I will tryi to listen later.

Ferlinghetti is the real deal. To me he is the greatest living american since Vonnegut died.
I don't know if he is the greatest living poet. I just worship him.

This is a bit from the interview
Strive to change the world in such a way that there’s no further need to be a dissident. Read between the lives, and write between the lines. Be committed to something outside yourself. Be passionate about it. But don’t destroy the world, unless you have something better to replace it.

The bit about not destroying the world reminds me of the Weimar Republic. Such a decadent democracy like ours in many ways. And so many wished to destroy it for something purer.
CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK; Weimar Artists, Wryly Biting the Hand
Paul Sethe, a writer who was sympathetic to the beset democratic politicians at the time, lamented: ''They could have used help. All they got was scorn and laughter.'' The artistic achievement of Weimar's best and brightest was a handmaiden to political disaster.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.h ... A96F958260



LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI: And the book begins -- this is a prose book, Poetry as Insurgent Art:

I am signaling you through the flames. The North Pole is not where it used to be. Manifest Destiny is no longer manifest. Civilization self-destructs. The goddess Nemesis is knocking at the door…
What are poets for in such an age? What is the use of poetry? If you would be a poet, create works capable of answering the challenge of Apocalyptic times, even if this means sounding apocalyptic. You have to decide if bird cries are cries of ecstasy or cries of despair, by which you will know if you are a tragic or a lyric poet. Conceive of love beyond sex. Be subversive, constantly questioning reality and the status quo. Strive to change the world in such a way that there’s no further need to be a dissident. Read between the lives, and write between the lines. Be committed to something outside yourself. Be passionate about it. But don’t destroy the world, unless you have something better to replace it.

If you would snatch fame from the flames, where is your burning bow, where are your arrows of desire, where your wit on fire?

The master class starts wars. The lower classes fight it. Governments lie. The voice of the government is often not the voice of the people.

Speak up, act out! Silence is complicity. Be the gadfly of the state and also its firefly. And if you have two loaves of bread, do as the Greeks did: sell one with the coin of the realm, and with the coin of the realm buy sunflowers.

Wake up! The world’s on fire!

Have a nice day!
Reminds me of what eyelidlessness was trying to say.


e-dog I am sorry to get off on a tangent about kerouac but I had to get that out of my system. Ever since I read that myth about On The Road I have been deluded that I was going to sit down one day and spew out my story of spider love. my story of acid, adultery, and abortion.

I been struggling with it for over thirty years. It was very helpful for me to learn the truth about how On THe Road came into being.

I don't know why it is so important for me to tell that story of how I became so sexually twisted.

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Post by e_dog » September 4th, 2007, 8:59 am

this truth is the myth.

the supposed 'scholar' says Kerouac worked on it "in his head" (i.e. living and thinking are part of "the writing process", no shit) and in his notebooks which are about a ton of different stuff. and sure the man in the form of editor, publishin houses tried to get 'im to revise. stilli bet much of it is spontaneous inspired. The man the Myth the legend Kerouac never dies.

Ferlinghetti says he's not influence by K'racky? Thats bull if ever there wuz! Just listen to 'im, sounds like Allen Ginsy when 'e reads, who in turn in very Jack-'nflu'nced.

Kerouac is a conservative Canuck. Let that be said.
I don't think 'Therefore, I am.' Therefore, I am.

Totenkopf

Post by Totenkopf » September 13th, 2007, 11:02 pm

Kerouac was not THAT con serv a tive; on the other hand. Ti Jean was not down with marxistas, or the ..........les deux magots sorts. Even his so-called move to the right was not that right. Ah perused some of his putative conservative essays written near his death: he basically says he doesn't trust Mao (nor should he have), or communists, but that he is not down with Nixonian America either......he seemed a bit ambivalent on Nam, though made a few anti-war gestures.....he was still Kerouac-- a bit unaffiliated, apolitical, not so hip, or hippie-------- but not Rudy f-n Juliani either.............He did not care for the beat's eagerness to embrace marxism....but that doesn't in some primitive binary fashion imply he therefore joined the GOP, or Osiris forbid the John Birch societay.................

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Post by e_dog » September 21st, 2007, 10:58 am

good research.

but, what were his anti-war gestures?

sure, nobody oughta 'trust Mao' but to be 'ambivalent on Nam' -- ain't that pretty conservatif? What didhe say 'ainst Nixon, bythe way?
I don't think 'Therefore, I am.' Therefore, I am.

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Post by Doreen Peri » September 21st, 2007, 12:13 pm

I went back and hit the right link this time.

Here's ferlinghetti on npr's "democracy now" interviewed by amy goodman

http://ia341217.us.archive.org/2/items/ ... 1_64kb.mp3

I'm listening now... very cool!

it's an hour show.

Thanks, e-dog!

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Post by jimboloco » September 23rd, 2007, 2:54 pm

interesting am also discovering my own conflicting ideas about communism versus social democracy
not an ideologue
working with people and how to-it-veness
open to possibilities
no to dehuminization and imperial command whatever the format

kerouac was a part of the ww2 generation
he saw how it mobilized his small town in mass
how it mobilized his family
and he explored the golden post war age

i was never able to relate to those quakers i sat in meeting with who were co's in ww2
some things ya gotta fight for
a lotta things ya gotta avoid fighting
kerowacky was part traditionalist
part rebel
in th soup
who else would live on top of a building in mexico city
and fall in love with a skinny dopehead goirl?

me am part traditionalist
part rebel
forsaking pot and cigarrettes
hardly ever drink booze
but untamed and kookie
with a will to survive and heal self and others

maybe he was ambivalent on nam cause by th time they had those teachins
he was already into decline
and had lost the capacity to learn
not so for his more healthy buddies
from whom he became sadly alienated
his house still here
fallow and maintained for his ghost
and the neighborhood cat
[color=darkcyan]i'm on a survival mission
yo ho ho an a bottle of rum om[/color]

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