On Poetry - and Losing Ferlinghetti

 3:24 PM

You sent Today at 3:24 PM

About two hours ago, I was looking for a poem. More specifically I was looking through poems trying to decide which ones to choose for a poetry salon that some folks in my church are having tonight. I was looking through the works of Lawrence Ferlinghetti because he is -- as I have often said-- my favorite poet. He may not in fact be the "best" poet I have read -- I tred lightly here -- but he is the one who made me fall in love with poetry. There’s so many poems to choose from. Most people who know him know his probably most famous book A Coney Island of the Mind. Some people know him because he was the one who published Allen Ginsberg's famous poem Howl. And of course he started City Lights Booksellers in San Francisco, which I consider to be Mecca for all readers, writers, thinkers, and lovers of words.

A few minutes ago, I got a text from one of my oldest and dearest friends who lives in San Francisco. He and I used to compete together in college in public speaking tournaments. He knew me back when I discovered Ferlinghetti. He texted me to break the hard news: Ferlinghetti died today at 101. I can’t quite put together how this happened. I can’t quite explain why it is that I had been immersed in Ferlinghetti, pondering his mortality and now find myself holding this news as I walk my dog on the beach. I am walking on crunching sand, looking at fragments of shell and stone and sea and thinking of words and connections and all that I love and have loved. What a miracle.

I told my friend that I am so glad he was the one to break the news to me. In the next few days-- probably in the next few hours -- tributes and testimonials will pour open. I’m sure there will be readings and people asking: wasn’t he one of those Beat poets? What were those guys doing? Hint: you really have to read it to get it.

For me, this moment is an outpouring of love and gratitude and tears. Without Ferlinghetti, for me there would’ve been no Raymond Carver, no Maya Angelou, no Yeats, or Billy Collins. I am not a poet though I’d like I know my way around a sentence. But God, I do love language. Ferlinghetti did too.

He was also fiercely political. At age 100--100! --that he was still writing and railing against the evils of Donald Trump with his poem "Trump's Trojan Horse" which decried "predatory capitalism". Physically he was a bit frail but mentally he was 150% there. I hope for that in my life.

There’s no more to say except that I knew this moment was coming and one of my very few life regrets is that I never got to see him at a reading. I’m so grateful for his work and spirit. Godspeed good wordsmith.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti Turns 100: Hear the Great San Francisco Poet Read "Trump's Trojan Horse," "Pity the Nation" & Many Other Poems | Open Culture

Dove Sta Amore ~

Dove sta amore
Where lies love
Dove sta amore
Here lies love
The ring dove love
In lyrical delight
Hear love's hillsong
Love's true willsong
Love's low plainsong
Too sweet painsong
In passages of night
Dove sta amore
Here lies love
The ring dove love
Dove sta amore
Here lies love

Lawrence Ferlinghetti