Happy, Happy 100th Birthday Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti-Max Daddy Of Famed “City Lights Bookstore” In “Beat” San Francisco When It Counted And Muse Of His Generation’s Poets
A Ferlingetti Of The Mind – The Documentary Lawrence Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth Of Wonder
DVD Review
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Lawrence Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of
Wonder, starring Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the usual cast of 1950’s “beat” and
1960s “hippie” characters
Yeah, you know at some very young
age, well before puberty, most of us get our natural stock of wonder beaten out
of us, wonder at the world, wonder about why this is this way and that is that
way, and the funny makeup of the nature of the universe, hell, just plain
ordinary vanilla wonder. That is why poets, good and bad, are precious
commodities in restoring the human balance, in letting us once more check in on
the wonder game which their words, their particular scheme of words since they
have not had their sense of wonder beaten out of them (no matter how hard in
individual cases someone might have tried). Every self-respecting radical or
progressive in some other field like, for example, Karl Marx in political
theory has treasured their friendships with the poets, and rightly so no matter
how quirky they get. That quirkiness and the precious commodity of wonder get a
full workout by one self-described anarchist poet, Lawrence Ferlinghett as his
life’s story unfolds in the documentary under review, Lawrence Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth Of Wonder.
Today perhaps not as many people
outside of the San Francisco Bay area may be as familiar with the work of
Ferlinghetti, although A Coney Island of the mind is one of the best selling poetry
collection ever, and this film makes some amends for that short-coming. Of
course the Ferlinghetti name might become more familiar in some circles if you
put the name with the City Lights bookstore that he founded and which is still
going strong today as a central haven for creative spirits in the area. Or for
legal buffs and aficionados his connection with the “pornography” free of
expression suit brought in the 1950s around publication of Allen Ginsburg’s Howl. That connection between poet and
bookstore owner get plenty of exposure here as it should since it is hard to
think of say Allen Ginsberg or Gregory Corso two poets active in that same period
combining those two skills.
This film, since it doubles up as a
short biopic as well as cultural artifact gives plenty of information about the
long bumpy ride for Ferlinghetti to first begin unleashing his poetic visions
and then tie those words into a new left-wing (as mentioned above, anarchist if
anybody is asking) way of looking at society. Not so strangely a lot of his
emergence as a poet and central cultural figure was connected when he hit San
Francisco in the early 1950s. If he had
found himself in let’s say Cleveland at that time things might have turned out very
differently for Frisco along with the Village in New York were oases against
the prevailing cookie-cutter, keep your head down, Cold War red scare night
where the misfits and renegades found shelter and kindred.
Of course beside the poetic vision
and the bookstore as cultural expression Ferlinghetti, as the film also makes
clear, was one of those behind the scenes players who make new cultural
explosions happen. He was, although not a “beat” poet himself (his take on the question)
and although he was not a “hippie” poet either he was a central figure in both
movements as be-bop beat gave way to acid-etched hippie-dom. Something I did
not know was how many places like May 1968 in Paris and 1959 in Cuba he had
been involved with which surely affected the weight of his more political
poems. And in the end his prolific run of poetry in all sizes and shapes,
especially the now classic A Coney Island
of the Mind will be the legacy, will be that little slice of wonder future
generations will cling to.
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