- If you would be a poet, create works capable of answering the challenge of
apocalyptic times, even if this meaning sounds apocalyptic.
You are Whitman, you are Poe, you are Mark Twain, you are Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay, you are Neruda and Mayakovsky and Pasolini, you are an American or a non-American, you can conquer the conquerors with words....
— Lawrence Ferlinghetti. From Poetry as Insurgent Art [I am signaling you through the flames].
hi lil
hi _refugee_
One thought I have reading this is that, the more I read about and consider writing and the state of Being a Writer Amid These Changing Times, is that is not truly enough just to write in answer to the challenge of these apocalyptic times. You must also change writing while you are doing it - challenge writing norms, push writing to do more than it already has, play with it, make your way of writing different somehow, revolutionary. The content must be vital and respond to the times, but the writing must also push current boundaries or stale norms, must open up something new, must be somehow new, itself.
My only experience with Lawrence Ferlinghetti prior to this post is his appearance at the Last Waltz: Any favorite poems?