My Response To Things

The poems of Lawrence Ferlinghetti are an attractive bunch varying from simple extended anecdotes to short poems of blossoming language. Making San Francisco his home since 1950, Ferlinghetti encapsulates the city with his words and through innovative ideas gives fresh importance to even the oldest landmarks. It only makes sense that he should be poet laureate of this weird city.

In an early poem, North Beach Scene, Ferlinghetti describes a woman hanging sheets in the wind. Through his words he plucks the simple moment out of the air and meticulously describes every beautiful detail, which otherwise would have gone unnoticed in a busy carefree world. The woman reaches up to hang the last of her sheets, but is captured as it “winds itself about her, clinging to her skin” and she “tosses back her head in voiceless laughter” (Ferlinghetti ln. 16-17, 19-20). This scene is straightforward, but beautiful. You can feel the morning light and the ocean mist breathing salt down your neck through his words.

Ferlinghetti has the ability to spin everyday observations, such as a dog walking down the street, Dog, into an adventure, stopping to evocatively remark about the obvious: a dog “doesn’t hate cops he merely has no use for them” (Ferlinghetti ln. 23-24). It simple things, both poetic and relevant, that make you just stop reading and smile. He can describe so much of a San Francisco street corner with so little. There are the “drunks in doorways, moons on trees” as well as “fish on newsprint” and “Chickens in Chinatown windows” (Ferlinghetti ln. 7-8, 12, 14).

Ferlinghetti also has an uncanny ability to state the obvious in a relatable thought provoking and meaningful way. In The Green Street Mortuary Marching Band, he describes how the band marches down the street and the “café sitters…sit talking and laughing and looking right through it as if it happened every day” (Ferlinghetti 4, 6-8). This scene perfectly documents the attitude people have of their city when festivities are erupting down the streets. How people pretend not to notice exciting things such as a band, but inside are happy and pleased to be a part of it.

Ferlinghetti can also be dismal such when describing the homeless in I Saw One of Them or San Francisco’s suicide attraction in At the Golden Gate, but he is usually warm and bright, pumping light into an already glowing city. His artistic line structures are playful, taking a backseat to the more important weight of his words, presenting the words on the page as free flowing thoughts coming together like his poems. Good work sir, now let’s just get Coit Tower tilting.