ALSO BY LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI

A Coney Island of the Mind

Americus, Book I

Euroj^ean Poems <Sl Transitions

A Far Rockaway of the Heart

Her (novel)

How to Paint Sunlight

Routines (plays)

The Secret Meaning of Things

Starting from San Francisco

These Are My Rivers

Wild Dreams of a New Beginning

Love in the Days of Rage (novel) A NEW DIRECTIONS BOOK

 Copyright © 1975,1976, 1978, 1979, 1981, 2004, 2007
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti CONTENTS
All rights reserved, except for brief passages quoted in a
newspaper, magazine, radio, or television review, no part of
this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means,
electronic or medianical, including photocopying and
recording, by any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the Publisher.

Manufactured in the United Sates of America

New Directions Books are printed on acid-free paper. Poetry As Insurgent Art 1
First published clothbound by New Directions in 2007
Published simultaneously in Canada by
Penguin Books Canada Limited
What is Poetry? 33
Book design by Sylvia Frezzolini Severance &
Lawrence Ferlinghetti Forethoughts
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Populist Manifesto # 1 (1976) 69
Ferlinghetti, Lawrence.
Poetry as an insurgent art / by Lawrence Ferlinghetti,
Populist Manifesto # 2 (1978) 76
p. cm. Modem Poetry Is Prose (1978) 85
“A New Directions Book.”
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8112-1719-4 (acid-free paper)
ISBN 978-0-8112-1740-8 (pbk.)
I. Title. Bibliographical Note 90
PS3511.E557P56 2007
811'.54—dc22
2007011396

New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin

by New Directions Publishing Corporation,
80 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10011
To Nancy Joyce Peters POETRY AS
INSURGENT ART

The woods ofArcady are dead,

And over is their antique joy;
Of old the world on dreaming fed;
Grey truth is now her yainted toy...
—^William Butier Yeats

What times are these

When to write a p>oem about love
Is almost a crime
Because it contains
So many silences
About so many horrors....
—^After Bertolt Brecht

' “We apologize for the inconvenience,

but this is a revolution."
■Subcomandante Marcos
I am signaling you through the
flames.

The North Pole is not where it used

to be.

Manifest Destiny is no longer mani­

fest.

Civilization self-destructs.

Nemesis is knocking at the door.

What are poets for, in such an age?

What is the use of poetry?

The state of the world calls out for

poetry to save it.

If you would be a poet, create works

capable of answering the challenge

3
of apocal}rptic times, even if this heathen outpourings speaking in
means sounding apocalyptic. tongues, bombast public speech,
automatic scribblings, surrealist sens­
You are Whitman, you are Poe, you ings, streams of consciousness,
are Mark Twain, you are Emily found sounds, rants and raves—to
Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent create your own limbic, your own
Millay, you are Neruda and Maya­ underlying voice, your ur voice.
kovsky and Pasolini, you are an
American or a non-American, you can If you call yourself a poet, don't just
conquer the conquerors with words. sit there. Poetry is not a sedentary
occupation, not a "take your seat"
If you would be a poet, write living practice. Stand up and let them
newspapers. Be a reporter from have it.
outer space, filing dispatches to
some supreme managing editor who Have wide-angle vision, each look a
believes in full disclosure and has a world glance. Express the vast clarity
low tolerance for bullshit. of the outside world, the sun that
sees us all, the moon that strews its
If you would be a poet, experiment shadows on us, quiet garden ponds,
with all manner of poetics, erotic willows where the hidden thrush
broken grammars, ecstatic religions. sings, dusk falling along the riverrun.

5
4
and the great spaces that open out If you would be a great poet, strive
upon the sea . . . high tide and the to transcribe the consciousness of
heron’s call. . . . And the people, the the race.
people, yes, all around the earth,
speaking Babel tongues. Give voice Through art, create order out of the
to them all. chaos of living.

You must decide if bird cries are cries Make it new news.
of ecstasy or cries of despair, by
which you will know if you are a Write beyond time.
tragic or a lyric poet.
Reinvent the idea of truth.
If you would be a poet, discover a new
way for mortals to inhabit the earth. Reinvent the idea of beauty.

If you would be a poet, invent a new In first light, wax poetic. In the night,
language anyone can understand. wax tragic.

If you would be a poet, speak new Listen to the lisp of leaves and the
truths that the world can’t deny. ripple of rain.

6 7
Put your ear to the ground and hear Hip Hop and Rap your way to liber­
the turning of the earth, the surge of ation.
the sea, and the laments of dying
Try being a singing animal turned
animals.
pimp for a pacifist king.
Conceive of love beyond sex.
Read between the lives and write
Question everything and everyone, between the lines.
including Socrates, who questioned
Your poems must be more than
everything. want ads for broken hearts.
Question "God" and his buddies on
A poem must sing and fly away with
earth. you or it's a dead duck with a prose
soul.
Be subversive, constantly question­
ing reality and the status quo. A lyric poem must rise beyond
sounds found in alphabet soup.
Strive to change the world in such a
way that there's no further need to Write down the words of astrono­
be a dissident. mers who have seen, with Heinrich
Olber, the place where all is light.
9
8
Remember that “The night, a few Instead of trying to escape reality,
stars” has more poetic force than a plunge into the flesh of the world.
whole catalog of the heavens.
If you call yourself a poet, sing it,
Your images in a poem should be don't state it.
jamais vu, not deja vu.
Don't let it be said of you that slug­
Words can save you where guns gish imagination drowned out the
can't. slush of your heart.

Decide if a poem is a question or a Bring together again the telling of a

declaration, a meditation or an out­ tale and the living voice.
cry.
Be a teller of great tales, even the
Reinvent America and the world. darkest.

Climb the Statue of Liberty. Give a voice to the tongueless street.

Mistrust metaphysics, trust in the Make common words uncommon.

imagination and re-fertilize it.
Have a lover's quarrel with man's
fate.
11
10
Kiss the mirror and write on it what Question with a pure heart the
you see and hear. inscrutable meaning of things and
our tragicomic destiny.
Poet, be God^s spy, if God exists.
Painter, paint his eye, if He has one. Are you gifted with enchantment
and girded with wonder? Do you
Be a dark barker before the tents of have the mad sound? Be a Zen-fool.
existence.
The sunshine of poetry casts shad­
See the rose through world-colored ows. Paint them too.
glasses.
You can never see or hear or feel too
Be an eye among the blind. much. If you can stand it.

Dance with wolves and count the Strive to recover the innocence of
stars, including the ones whose light eye you had in childhood.
hasn’t got here yet.
Compose on the tongue, not on the
Be naive, non-cynical, as if you had
just landed on earth, astonished by page.
what you have fallen upon. Like a Buddhist, listen to your own
breathing.
12 13
Lower your voice and speak from One great poem should be bom of
your chest, not through your nose. the sum of all your poems, recording
more than surface reality, more than
When performing your poetry, don't “what's passing by the window."
try to shatter windows in the next
zip code. Find the further reality, if there is
one.
In this art, you have no singing mas­
ter, save your inner ear. Your language must sing, with or
without rhyme, to justify it being in
You are only as great as your ear. the typography of poetry.
Too bad if it is tin.
Make it more than “spoken word"
As with humans, poems have fatal poetry; make it “sung word" poetry.
flaws.
Back up your voice with a musical
Sing Hello! instrument or other sound and let
your poems blossom into song.
Write an endless poem about your
life on earth or elsewhere, a poetry Dig folk singers who are the true
larger than life. singing poets of yesterday and today.

15
14
Read between the lines of human Think long thoughts in short sen­
discourse. tences.

Make your mind learn its way If you would be a poet, don’t think
around the heart. quirks of thought are poetry.

Your life is your poetry. If you have Any three lines do not a haiku make.
no heart, you’ll write heartless poetry. It takes an epiphany to make it pop.

Avoid the provincial, go for the uni­ After a poetry reading, never submit
versal. to a Question-and-Answer session.
Poetry gets the listeners high. A Q-
Don’t hew stones. Dip into the sea and-A brings it all down to prose.
for poetry, every poem a live fish. Do they ask a folk singer to explain
his songs?
Say the unsayable, make the invisi­
ble visible. Like a field of sunflowers, a poem
should not have to be explained.
Think subjectively, write objectively.
If a poem has to be explicated, it’s a
Be a literalist of the imagination. The failure in communication.
concrete is most poetic.
16 17
A poet should not discuss the craft of If you have to teach poetry, strike
poetry or the process of creating it. It your blackboard with the chalk of
is more than a trade secret, mystify­ light.
ing by its mysteries.
No ideas but in the senses. Nihil in
Whatever a poet says about his work intellectu quod non prius in sensu.
is an apology he shouldn’t make.
If you would be a great poet, associ­
Do you want to be a great writer or ate with thinking poets. They’re
a great academic, a bourgeois poet or hard to find.
a flaming rad?
Thinking poetry need not be sans
Can you imagine Shelley attending a ecstasy.
poetry workshop?
Read the epic novelists, the prophetic
Yet poetry workshops may create poets, the great storytellers, the great
communities of poetic kinship in minds.
heardand America where many may
feel lonely and lost for lack of kindred Haunt bookstores.
souls.
What’s on your mind? What do you

19
18
have in mind? Open your mouth and Exceed eveiyone’s great expecta­
stop mumbling. tions and direst prophecies.

Don’t be so open-minded that your If you would be a great poet^ be the

brains fall out. conscience of the race.

Become a new mind and make it Resist much; obey less.

newer.
Challenge capitalism masquerading
Sweep away the cobwebs. as democracy.

Cultivate dissidence and critical Challenge all political creedS; includ­

thinking. First thought may be worst ing radical populism and hooligan
thought. socialism.

Pursue the White Whale but don’t Consider Sufism, especially its tantric
harpoon it. Catch its song instead. ecstasy in which poetry on the tongue
leads to the heart and so to the soul.
Allow yourself dazzling flight—^flights
of outrageous imagination. Glory in the pessimism of the intel­
lect and the optimism of the will.

20 21
Don^t blow bubbles of despair. Stand up for the stupid and crazy.

Poetry is seeds and buds, not twigs. See eternity in the eyes of animals.
Smoke it to get high.
See eternity, not the other night, but
Generate collective joy in the face of tonight.
collective gloom.
Express the inexpressible.
Secretly liberate any being you see in
Don^t be too arcane for the man in
a cage.
the street.
Liberate have-nots and enrage despots.
Be a songbird, not a parrot.
Sound a barbarous yawp over the
roofs of the world. Be a canary in the coal mine. (A dead
canary is not just an ornithological
Caw the great Caw. problem.)

Sow your poems with the salt of the Be also a rooster, waking up the
earth. world.

22 23
Write short poems in the voice of birds. Why listen to critics who have not
themselves written great master­
Birdsong is not made by machines. pieces?
Give your poem wings to fly to the
treetops. Don't produce poetry by the Pound.

Don't pander, especially not to audi­ Don't write re-runs of virtual realities.
ences, readers, editors, or publishers.
Be a wolf in the sheepfold of silence.
Don't cater to the Middle Mind of
America nor to consumer society. Be Don't slip on the banana peel of
a poet, not a huckster. nihilism, even while listening to the
roar of Nothingness.
Don't put down the scholastics who
say a poem should have wholeness, Fill the dark abyss that yawns behind
harmony, radiance, truth, beauty, every face, every life, every nation.
goodness.
Make a new poem out of every
Go to sea in ships, or work near experience and overcome the
water, and paddle your own boat. myopia of the present moment.

24 25
Catch instants, every second a heart­ Don't let them tell you poetry is for
beat. the birds.

Stash your sell-phone and be here Have a good laugh at those who tell
now. you poets are misfits or potential ter­
rorists and a danger to the state.
Look for the permanent in the
evanescent and fleeting. Don't let them tell you poetry is a
neurosis that some people never out­
Make permanent waves, and not just
grow.
on the heads of stylish women.
Laugh at those who tell you poetry is
Don't fiddle with your moustache in all 'Written by the Holy Ghost and
hopeless cellars, writing incompre­ you're just a ghost-’writer.
hensible drivel.
Don't ever believe poetry is irrele­
Why live in the shadows? Get your­ vant in dark times.
self a seat in the Sun Boat.
Don't let them tell you poets are f^ar-
Don't let them tell you poetry is asiti.
bullshit.

26 27
Laugh at those who tell you poetry is Come out of your closet. It's dark in
paid for by Social Insecurity. there.

Don't believe them when they tell Dare to be a non-violent poetic guer­
you nobody buys the penny stock of rilla, an anti-hero.
poetry in the stock market of our
casino culture. Temper your most intemperate voice
with compassion.
Unless you have an urge to sing,
don't open your mouth.
Make new wine out of the grapes of
If you have nothing to say don't say it. wrath.

Don't lecture like this. Don't say Don't. Remember that men & women are
infinitely ecstatic, infinitely suffering
Mock those who tell you you're liv­ beings.
ing in a dream world. Dream your
own reality. Camp out on the shores Raise the blinds, throw open your
of reality. shuttered windows, raise the roof,
unscrew the locks from the doors,
Laugh at those who tell you "Go
but don't throw away the screws.
prose, young man, go prose."

28 29
Don^t destroy the world unless you classes fight them. Governments lie.
have something better to replace it. The voice of the government is often
not the voice of the people.
Challenge Nemesis, the vengeful
goddess, the invidious goddess. Speak up. Act out. Silence is com­
plicity.
Be committed to something outside
yourself. Be the gadfly of the state and also its
firefly.
Be passionate about it.
And if you have two loaves of bread,
If you would snatch fame from the do as the Greeks did—sell one and
flames, where is your burning bow, with the coin of the realm buy sun­
where your arrows of desire, where flowers.
your wit on fire?
Wake up, the world^s on fire!
When the poet lets down his pants,
his ^arse poetica^ should be evident, Have a nice day.
giving rise to lyric erections.

The master class starts wars; the lower * * *

30 31
Oh you gatherer WHAT IS POETRY?
of the fine ash of poetry
ash of the too-white flame
of poetry Love lie with me
And I will tell
Consider those who have burned
before you
in the so white fire
Crucible of Keats and Campana
Bruno and Sappho
Rimbaud and Poe and Corso
And Shelley burning on the beach
atViareggio

And now in the night

in the general conflagration
the white light
still consuming us
small clowns
with our little tapers
held to the flame!

♦ * *

32
Poetry is what we would cry out
upon coming to ourselves in a dark
wood in the middle of the journey of
our life.

Poems are burning bows, poems are

arrows of desire, poetry gives words
to the heart.

Poetry is the truth that reveals all

lies, the face without mascara.

What is poetry? Wind stirs the grass­

es, howls in the passes.

Voice lost and dreaming, door float­

ed over the horizon.

O drunk flute O golden mouth, kiss

kiss in stone boudoirs.

35
What is poetry? A clown laughs, a Poems are e-mails from the unknown
clown weeps, dropping his mask. beyond cyberspace.

Poetry is the Unknown Guest in the Poetry is the ultimate inner refuge.
house.
Poems are lumina, emitting light.
Poetry is the Great Memory, every
word a live metaphor. Poetry as an anchor in your life is
only as good as the depths it can
Poetry the eye of the heart, the heart reach.
of the mind.
Poetry as a first language before
Words wait to be reborn in the shad­ writing still sings in us, a mute
ow of the lamp of poetry. music, an inchoate music.

First light and a dark bird wings Life lived with poetry in mind is
away—^it^s a poem. itself an art.

The morning dove mourning night is Poems like moths press against the
my delight. window, trying to reach the flame.

36 37
Poetry the cry of the heart that Poetry the supreme fiction.
awakens angels and kills devils.
Poetry is news from the growing edge
Poetry is white writing on black, on the far frontiers of consciousness.
black writing on white.
Poetry a mute melody in the head of
Poems hide in night skies, in broken
every dumb animal.
tenements, in autumn's wind-swept
leaves, in lost and found letters,
Poetry a descant rising out of the
faces lost in a crowd. . . .
dumb heart of darkness.
Poetry can be the bluegrass of litera­
ture, recalling us to down-home It is private solitude made public.
beginnings.
It is the light at the end of the tunnel
Poetiy the painting of states of mind and the darkness within.
and deep profiles of faces.
It is the morning dove mourning
Poetry a naked woman, a naked love, and nothing cries out like the
man, and the distance between cry of the heart.
them.

38 39
Poetry holds death at bay. Poetry is boat-tailed birds singing in
the setting sun on the tops of
Poetry is not all heroin horses and jacaranda trees in the plaza of San
Rimbaud. It is also the powerless Miguel de Allende.
prayers of airline passengers fasten­
ing their seatbelts for the final And all the birds of the universe
descent. flocking together in one huge book.

Poems fulfill longings and put life A poem is a phosphorescent instant

back together again. illuminating time.

Poetry the shortest distance between Poetry is more than painting sunlight
two humans. on the side of a house.

Every bird a word, every word a bird. The impossible function of poetry is
to fathom man’s destiny and tran­
And every poem an exaggeration, scend it.
understated.
Poetry is Van Gogh’s ear echoing
Poetry a precession of waterbirds in with all the blood of the world.
flight mixed with motor accidents.

40 41
Poetry the primary conductor of It is a black kid dancing around a
emotion. banana tree at night in a patio on
Toulouse Street.
It is a lightning rod transmitting
epiphanies. Poetry is eternal graffiti in the heart
of everyone.
It is not a spent light, a bumed-out
lamp, a lume sp>ento. It is the solace of the lonely—loneli­
ness itself poetic.
It is a dragonfly catching fire.
Words on a page of poetry are a code
It is a firefly of the imagination. for human emotions.

It is the sea-light of Greece, the dia­ Paper may bum but words will escape.
mond light of Greece.
A poem is a mirror walking down a
Poetry is a bright vision made dark, a high street full of visual delight.
darkling vision made bright.
Poetry is the shook foil of the imagi­
It is what the early spring is saying nation. It can shine out and half
about the deaths of winter. blind you.

42 43
It is the sun streaming down in the It is made by dissolving halos in
meshes of morning. oceans of sound.

It is white nights and mouths of It is the street talk of angels and devils.
desire.
It is a sofa full of blind singers who
A poem is a tree with live leaves have put aside their canes.
made from log piles of words.
Poems are lifesavers when your boat
A poem should arise to ecstasy some­ capsizes.
where between speech and song.
Poetry is the anarchy of the senses
It is the still sound between the making sense.
strings of an old violin played in the
backyard of a tenement at nightfall. Poetry is all things bom with wings
that sing.
Poetry is the essence of ideas before
they are distilled into thought. Poetry is a voice of dissent against
the waste of words and the mad
Poetry is a quiver on the skin of eter­ plethora of print.
nity.

44 45
It is what exists between the lines. A poem can be made of common
household ingredients. It fits on a
A true poem can create a divine still­ single page yet it can fill a world and
ness in the world. fits in the pocket of a heart.

It is made with the syllables of The poet a street singer who rescues
dreams. the alleycats of love.

It is far far cries upon a beach at The poet^s voice is the other voice
nightfall. asleep in every human.

It is a lighthouse moving its mega­ Poetry is pillow-thought after inter­

phone over the sea. course.

It is a picture of Ma in her Poems are the lost pages of day &

Woolworth bra looking out a win­ night.
dow into a secret garden.
It is the distillation of articulate ani­
It is an Arab carrying colored rugs mals calling to each other across a
and birdcages through the streets of great gulf.
Baghdad.

46 47
It is a pulsing fragment of the inner It shimmers in the cup of morning.
life, an untethered music.
Poetry is the incomparable lyric
It is the dialogue of naked statues to intelligence brought to bear upon
the sound of gaiety and weeping. fifty-seven varieties of experience.

It is the sound of summer in the rain It is the energy of the soul, if soul
and of people laughing behind exists.
closed shutters down an alley at
night. It is a high house echoing with all
the voices that ever said anything
It is Helenas straw hair in sunlight. crazy or wonderful.

It is Ulysses^ sword on fire. It is a subversive raid upon the forgot­

ten language of the collective uncon­
It is a bare light bulb in a homeless scious.
hotel illuminating a nakedness of
minds and hearts. Poetry a life-giving weapon deployed
in the killing fields.
Poetry is worth nothing and there­
fore priceless. Poetry the perfume of resistance.

48 49
Poetry a perpetual revolt against Poetry is made by evaporating the
silence exile and cunning. liquid laughter of youth.

Poetry deconstructs power. Absolute Poetry is a book of light at night, dis­

poetry deconstructs absolutely. persing clouds of unknowing.

It is a real canary in a coal mine, and It hears the whisper of elephants.

we know why the caged bird sings.
It knows how many angels &
It is a rope to tie around you in a demons dance on the head of a phal­
sounding sea without shores. lus.

It is the shadow cast by our street­ It is a humming a keening a laughing

light imaginations. a sighing at dawn, a wild soft laughter.

Poetry is made of night-thought. If it It is the final gestalt of the imagina­

can tear itself away from illusion, it tion.
will not be disowned before the
dawn. Poetry should be emotion recollect­
ed in emotion.
On the lips of the beloved, poetry is
a divine pearl.
50 51
Poetry the underwear of the soul. Poetry is the rediscovery of the self
against the tribe.
Words are living fossils. The poet
pieces the wild beast together. The poet is the master ontologist,
constantly questioning existence and
Prose masquerading in the typogra­ reinventing it.
phy of poetry is not poetry.
A poem is a flower of an instant in
Poetry is not a “product.” It is itself eternity.
an elementary particle.
The poet mixes drinks out of wild
Poetry is a guillotine for accepted liquors and is perpetually surprised
ideas, des idees regues. that no one staggers.

The poet a pickpocket of reality. Poetry can be heard at manholes,

echoing up Dante^s fire escape.
Poetry is a paper boat on the flood of
spiritual desolation. It recognizes the totalitarianism of
the rational mind and breaks through
Poetry is madness and erotic bliss. it.

52 53
A poem is a dinghy setting out to sea It is the humming of moths as they
from the listing ship of society. circle the flame.

A poem is a shadow of a plane flee­ It is the moon weeping because it

ing over the ground like a cross must fade away in the day.
escaping a church.
It is a wood boat moored in the
The poem is a telescope waiting for shade under a weeping willow in the
the poet to focus it. bend of a river.

Every poet his own priest and his The poet sees eternity in the mute
own confessor. eyes of all animals, including men
and women.
Poetry is at once sacred and pagan
play. Poetry is the real subject of great prose.

Poetry is play at its most utopian. It speaks the unspeakable. It utters

the inutterable sigh of the heart.
Poetry the ludic play of homo ludens.
Each poem a momentary madness,
Poetry a fornication against fate. and the unreal is the realist.

54 55
Poetry a form of lyric insanity. A poet a trance-dancer in the Last
Waltz.
A poem is still a knock on a door of
the unknown. Poetry assuages our absolute loneli­
ness in the lonely universe.
A poem a piercing look into the very
heart of things. The light we see in the sky comes
from a distant burning, as does poetry.
It is a realization of the subjective,
the inner life of being. Poetry is a radical presence constant­
ly goading us.
Art is not Chance. Chance is not art,
except by chance. Poetry in handcuffs handcuffs the
human race.
Great poets are the antennae of the
race, with more than rabbit ears. Poetry can still save the world by
transforming consciousness.
Poetry the ultimate illusion to live by.
A sunflower maddened with light
Like a breast, a poem is more beauti­ sheds the seeds of poems.
ful if it is veiled in mystery.

56
In poetry; trees, beasts, and humans Images appear and disappear in
talk. poetry and painting, out of a dark
void and into it again, messengers of
Poetry gives voice to all who see and light and rain, raising their bright
sing and cry and laugh. flickered lamps and vanishing in an
instant. Yet they can be glimpsed
A poem is a window through which long enough to save them as shad­
everything that passes can be seen ows on a wall in Platons cave.
anew.
Just as the soul of civilization is seen
Each poem a passion fruit, a pith of in its architecture, a paucity of poet­
pure being. ic imagination signals the decline of
its culture.
Eyes & lips the doors of love, sight &
sound the portals of poetry. The war against the imagination is
not the only war. Using the 9/11
The kind sun of Impressionism Twin Towers disaster as an excuse,
makes poems out of light and America has initiated the Third
shade. The broken light of abstract World War, which is the War against
expressionism makes poems out of the Third World.
chaos.

58 59
Stutterers and stammerers also have Poetry destroys the bad breath of
the to make poetry. machines.

Poetry is a plant that grows at night Poetry a pure parallel universe.

to give name to desire.
Poetry has no gender but isn't sexless.
Poetry a mediation between every­
day reality and us. Poetry is both the dough and the
leaven.
Poetry about poetry is counterfeit
poetry. Poetry the camera-eye of the mind,
without a shutter.
Poetry a meditation that assuages
the loneliness of the long-distance Poetry exists because some men try
swimmer. to put flowers in prison.

Non-psychedelic poetry can enlight­ Any child who can catch a firefly
en a psychedelic. owns poetry.

Poetry eats Proust^s cookies and The lyric surge and strife of life is
washes its mouth with song. poetry.

60 61
Poetry an innate urge toward truth The poet a membrane to filter light
and beauty. and disappear in it.

When poets are treated like dogs, Poetry is a handprint of the invisible,
they howl. a footprint of visible reality, follow­
ing it like a shadow.
Speech is to poetry as sound is to
music, and it must sing. Poetry a timeless tick, a beat of the
heart in timeless eternity.
Poetry is making something out of
nothing, and it can be about nothing As long as there is an unknown,
and still mean something. there will be poetry.

The function of poetry is to debunk Poetry a shining spear for the poor­
with light. est warrior.
Poetry like love dies hard among the
Love delights in love. Joy delights in
ruins. joy. Poetry delights in poetry.
Poetry like love a natural painkiller.
Great poetry requires hunger and pas­
The label on the bottle says: sion.
"Restores wonder and innocence.'

62 63
The greatest poem is lyric life itself. Supine poetry accepts the status quo.
Sitting poetry written by the sitting
Poetry is making love on hot after­ establishment has a bottom line dic­
noons in Montana. tated by its day job. Standing poetry
is the poetry of commitment; some­
Poetry is the earth turning and turn­ times great; sometimes dreadful.
ing; with its humans every day turn­
ing into light or darkness. The idea of poetry as an arm of class
war disturbs the sleep of those who
La vida es sueno. Life is a real dream do not wish to be disturbed in the
and poetry dreams it. pursuit of happiness.

But poetry serves many masters; not The poet by definition is the bearer
all beatific. Every age gets the poetry of Eros and love and freedom and
it deserves. thus the natural-born non-violent
enemy of the State.
Eyes are stars; stars are eyes looking
down at us with indifference; the It is the ultimate Resistance.
blind eyes of nature.
The poet a subversive barbarian at
There are three kinds of poetry: the city gateS; non-violently challeng­
ing the toxic status quo.
64 65
Dissident poetry is not UnAmerican. FORETHOUGHTS

The highest poetry is saying we might

die without it.

It can salvage deeply tragic lives.

It is the voice within the voice of the

turtle.

It is the face behind the face of the

race.

It is the voice of the Fourth Person

Singular.

Poetry the last lighthouse in rising

seas.

66
 POPULIST MANIFESTO #1

(1976)

Poets, come out of your closets,

Open your windows, open your doors,
You have been holed-up too long
in your closed worlds.
Come down, come down
from your Russian Hills and Telegraph
Hills,
your Beacon Hills and your Chapel
Hills,
your Mount Analogues and
Montpamasses,
down from your foot hills and
mountains,
out of your tepees and domes.
The trees are still falling
and we'll to the woods no more.
No time now for sitting in them

69
As man bums down his own house destroyed by boredom at poetry
to roast his pig. readings.
No more chanting Hare Krishna Poetry isn't a secret society.
while Rome burns. It isn't a temple either.
San Francisco's burning, Secret words & chants won't do any
Mayakovsky's Moscow's burning longer.
the fossil-fuels of life. The hour of owing is over,
Night & the Horse approaches the time for keening come,
eating light, heat & power, time for keening & rejoicing
and the clouds have trousers. over the coming end
No time now for the artist to hide of industrial civilization
above, beyond, behind the scenes, which is bad for earth & Man.
indifferent, paring his fingernails, Time now to face outward
refining himself out of existence. in the full lotus position
No time now for our little literary with eyes wide open.
games, Time now to open your mouths
no time now for our paranoias & with a new open speech,
hypochondrias, time now to communicate with all
no time now for fear & loathing, sentient beings.
time now only for light & love. All you Toets of the Cities'
We have seen the best minds of our hung in museums, including myself.
generation All you poet's poets writing poetry
about poetry.
70
IP

All you dead language poets and and talk about the workingclass
! deconstructionists, proletariat.
All you poetry workshop poets All you Catholic anarchists of poetry.
in the boondock heart of America, All you Black Mountaineers of poetry.
All you house-broken Ezra Pounds, All you Boston Brahmins and Bolinas
All you far-out freaked-out cut-up bucolics.
All you den mothers of poetry.
poets,
. All you pre-stressed Concrete poets, All you zen brothers of poetry.
, All you cunnilingual poets. All you suicide lovers of poetry.
All you pay-toilet poets groaning with All you hairy professors of poesie.
graffitti, All you poetry reviewers
I All you A-train swingers who never drinking the blood of the poet.
-I swing on birches, All you Poetry Police—
I All you masters of the sawmill haiku Where are Whitman's wild children,
in the Siberias of America, where the great voices speaking out
^ All you eyeless unrealists, with a sense of sweetness and sublimity,
j All you self-occulting supersurrealists, where the great new vision,
the great world-view,
1 All you bedroom visionaries
' and closet agitpropagators. the high prophetic song
All you Groucho Marxist poets of the immense earth
’ and leisure-class Comrades and all that sings in it
who lie around all day And our relation to it—

73
72
Poets, descend than other wheels can carry it.
to the street of the world once more Poetry still falls from the skies
And open your minds & eyes into our streets still open.
with the old visual delight, They haven't put up the barricades,
Clear your throat and speak up. yet,
Poetry is dead, long live poetry the streets still alive -with faces,
with terrible eyes and buffalo strength. lovely men & women still walking
Don^t wait for the Revolution there,
or it'll happen without you. still lovely creatures everywhere,
Stop mumbling and speak out in the eyes of all the secret of all
with a new wide-open poetry still buried there.
with a new commonsensual ^public Whitman's wild children still sleeping
surface' there.
with other subjective levels Awake and sing in the open air.
or other subversive levels,
a tuning fork in the inner ear
to strike below the surface.
Of your own sweet Self still sing
yet utter 'the word en-masse'—
Poetry the common carrier
for the transportation of the public
to higher places

74 75
 POPULIST MANIFESTO #2 'You Rimbauds of another breath’
sang Kush
(1978) and wandered off with his own
particular paranoias
maddened like most poets
Sons of Whitman sons of Poe for one mad reason or another
sons of Lorca & Rimbaud in the unmade bed of the world
or their dark daughters Sons of Whitman
poets of another breath in your 'public solitude’
poets of another vision bound by blood-duende
Who among you still speaks of 'President of your own body America’
revolution Take it back from those who have
Who among you still unscrews maddened you
the locks from the doors back from those who stole it
in this revisionist decade? and steal it daily
'You are President of your own body, The subjective must take back the
America’ world
Thus spoke Kush in Tepotzlan from the objective gorillas & guerrillas
youngblood wildhaired angel poet of the world
one of a spawn of wild poets We must rejoin somehow
in the image of Allen Ginsberg the animals in the fields
wandering the wilds of America in their steady-state meditation

76 77
Tour life is in your own hands still Listen now Listen again
Make it flower make it sing’ to the song in the blood the dark
(so sang mad Kush in Tepotzlan) duende a dark singing
^a constitutional congress of the body’ between the tickings of civilization
still to be convened to seize control between the lines of its headlines
of the State in the silences between cars
the subjective state driven like weapons
from those who have subverted it In two hundred years of freedom
The arab telephone of the avant-garde we have invented
has broken down the permanent alienation of the
And I speak to you now subjective
from another country almost every truly creative being
Do not turn away alienated & expatriated
in your public solitudes in his own country
you poets of other visions in Middle America or San Francisco
of the separate lonesome visions the death of the dream in your birth
untamed uncornered visions 0 meltingpot America
fierce recalcitrant visions 1 speak to you
you Whitmans of another breath from another country
which is not the too-cool breath of another kind of blood-letting land
modem poetry from Tepotzlan the poet’s Ian’
which is not the halitosis of industrial Land of the Lord of the Dawn
civilization Quetzalcoatl

78 79
Land of the Plumed Serpent Think now of your self
I signal to you as of a distant ship
as Artaud signaled Think now of your beloved
through the flames of the eyes of your beloved
I signal to you whoever is most beloved
over the heads of the land he who held you hard in the dark
the hard heads that stand like menhirs or she who washed her hair by the
above the land in every country waterfall
the short-haired hyenas whoever makes the heart pound
who still rule ever5^ing the blood pound
I signal to you from Poets’ Land Listen says the river
you poets of the alienated breath Listen says the sea Within you
to take back your land again you with your private visions
and the deep sea of the subjective of another reality a separate reality
Have you heard the sound of the ocean Listen and study the charts of time
lately Read the Sanskrit of ants in the sand
the sound by which daily You Whitmans of another breath
the stars still are driven there is no one else to tell
the sound by which nightly how the alienated generations
the stars retake their sky have lived out their expatriate visions
The sea thunders still to remind you here and everywhere
of the thunder in the blood The old generations have lived them
to remind you of your selves out
80 81
Lived out the bohemian myth in How many replicas of Woody Guthrie
Greenwich Villages with cracked guitars
Lived out the Hemingway myth How many photocopies of longhaired
in The Sun Also Rises Joan
at the Dome in Paris How many Ginsberg facsimiles and
or with the bulls at Pamplona carbon-copy Keseys
Lived out the Henry Miller myth still wandering the streets of America
in the Tropes of Paris in old tennis shoes and backpacks
and the great Greek dream or driving beat-up school buses
of The Colossus ofMaroussi with destination-signs reading ‘Further'
and the tropic dream of Gauguin How many Buddhist Catholics how
Lived out the D. H. Lawrence myth many cantors
in The Plumed Serpent chanting the Great Paramitra Sutra
in Mexico Lake Chapala on the Lower East Side
And the Malcolm Lowry myth How many Whole Earth Catalogs
Under the Volcano at Cuernavaca lost in outhouses on New Mexico
Ajid then the saga of On the Road communes
and the Bob Dylan myth Blowing in How many Punk Rockers waving
the Wind swastikas
How many roads must a man walk Franco is dead but so is Picasso
down Chaplin is dead but Fd wear his bowler
How many Neal Cassadys on lost having outlived all our myths but his
railroad tracks the myth of the pure subjective
82 83
the collective subjective MODERN POETRY IS PROSE
the Little Man in each of us
waiting with Chariot or Pozzo (1978)
On every corner I see them
those lost subjective selves I am thumbing through a great anthology
hidden inside their tight clean clothes of contemporary poetry, and it would
Their hats are not derbys they have no seem that "the voice that is great within
canes us” sounds within us mostly in a prose
They turn and hitch their pants voice, albeit in the typography of poetry.
and walk away from us Which is not to say it is prosaic or has no
in the great American night depths, which is not to say it is dead or
dying, or not lovely or not beautiful or
(Tep>otzlan-San Francisco) not well written or not witty and brave.
It is very much alive, very well written,
lovely, lively prose—uprose that stands
without the crutches of punctuation,
prose whose syntax is so clear it can be
written all over the page, in open forms
and open fields, and still be very clear,
very dear prose. And in the typography
of poetry, the poetic and the prosaic intel­
lect masquerade in each other's clothes.

84 85
 Walking through our prose buildings And this is the way the world ends, not
in the 21st century, one may look back with a song but a whimper.
and wonder at this strange age which Eighty or ninety years ago, when all
allowed poetry to walk in prose the machines began to hum, almost (as it
rhythms and still called it poetry. seemed) in unison, the speech of man
Modern poetry is prose because it certainly began to be affected by the
sounds as subdued as any city man or absolute staccato of machines. And city
woman whose life force is submerged in poetry certainly echoed it. Whitman was
urban life. Modern poetry is prose a holdover, singing the song of himself.
because it doesn^t have much duende, And Sandburg a holdover, singing his
dark spirit of earth and blood, no soul of sagas. And Vachel Lindsay a holdover,
dark song, no passion musick. Like drumming his chants. And later there
modem sculpture, it loves the concrete. was Wallace Stevens with his harmo­
Like minimal art, it minimizes emotion nious "Active music.” And there was
in favor of understated irony and Langston Hughes. And Allen Ginsberg,
implied intensity. As such it is the per­ chanting his mantras, singing Blake.
fect poetry for technocratic man. But There still are others everywhere, jazz
how often does this poetry rise above poets and poetic strummers and wailers
the mean sea level of his sparkling in the streets of the world, making poet­
plain? Ezra Pound once decanted his ry out of the urgent insurgent Now, of
opinion that only in times of decadence the immediate instant self, the incarnate
does poetry separate itself from music. carnal self (as D. H. Lawrence called it).

86 87
 But much poetry was caught up in applauded by poetry professors and
the linotype's hot slug and now in the poetry reviewers in all the best places,
computer's so cold type. No song none of whom will commit the original
among the typists, no song in our con­ sin of saying some poet's poetry is prose
crete architecture, our concrete music. in the typography of poetry—just as the
And the nightingales may still be poet's friends will never tell him, just as
singing near the Convent of the Sacred the poet's editors will never say it—the
Heart, but we can hardly hear them in dumbest conspiracy of silence in the
the city waste lands of T. S. Eliot, nor in history of letters.
his Four Quartets (which can't be played Most modem poetry is poetic prose
on any instrument and yet is the most but it is saying plenty, by its own exam­
beautiful prose of our time). Nor in the ple, about what death of the spirit our
prose wastes of Ezra Pound's Cantos technocratic civilization may be dealing
which aren't canti because they couldn't us, enmeshed in machines and macho
possibly be sung. Nor in the pangolin nationalisms, while some continue
prose of Mariarme Moore (who called longing for some nightingale among the
her writing poetry for lack of anything pines of Respighi. It is the bird singing
better to call it). Nor in the great prose that makes us happy.
blank verse of Karl Shapiro's Essay on
Rime, nor in the outer city speech of
William Carlos Williams, in the flat-out
speech of his Paterson. All of which is

88 89
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

After a lifetime, this (r)evolutionary little

book is still a work-in-progress, the poet's
ars poetica, to which at 88 he is constantly
adding.
The earliest version of ‘‘What Is Poetry”
was transcribed from a KPFA (FM) broadcast
by the author in the late 1950s; it was
republished in various versions in newspa­
pers, small press editions and translations. A
small part of “What Is Poetry?” was pub­
lished in Atnericus, Book /, Section III (New
Directions, 2004). “Populist Manifesto #1”
was broadcast in 1975 and published in The
New York Times as “Popular Manifesto.” It
had its first book publication in Who Are We
Now? (New Directions, 1976); “Populist
Manifesto # 2 (also known as “Adieu a
Chariot”) was published in the Los Angeles
Times in 1978 and had its first book publica­
tion in Landscap^es of Living and Dying (New
Directions, 1979). “Modem Poetry Is Prose”
was published in Endless Life (New
Directions, 1981).

90