A Far Rockaway Of The Heart - Lawrence Ferlinghetti's speech as poet laureate of San Francisco - Transcript

Whole Earth,  Summer, 1999  

• E-mail
• Print
• Link

And I've already proposed that a small wooden house on Treasure Island or in the Presidio be made a Poet's Cottage where future laureates might live or work and conduct poetry events or even an annual city poetry festival. The mayor and the important journal Poetry Flash are already behind it, so I hope it will happen.

And since we are in the Main Library, let's remember that the center of literate culture in cities has always centered in the great libraries as well as in the great independent bookstores. This library should have ten million dollars a year to spend on books, more than twice as much as presently allotted. It also needs more space, since evidently this new state-of-the-computer postmodern masterpiece doesn't have as much shelf space as the Old Library next door--that classical Carnegie-style library with its great turn-of the-century murals. I believe the people made a great mistake in passing the proposition to remove the building from the library system. It might not be too late to reclaim it as a Library Annex, even though the proposition to get rid of it has already been partially implemented. All it would take is another proposition that may soon very well succeed in reversing an earlier misguided vote.

Other outrageous things on my wish list include: One--give bicycles and pedestrians absolute priority over automobiles, and close much of the original inner city to cars, including upper Grant Avenue. Two--make the City a center for low-power alternative radio and TV, with tax breaks for the broadcasters. Three--uncover our City's creeks and rivers again and open up the riparian corridors to the Bay. Four--Paint the Golden Gate Bridge golden. Five--Tilt Coit Tower--think what it did for Pisa!

I'd like to announce that City Lights is just now attempting to create a nonprofit foundation so that City Lights may continue through the next century as a literary center and poetic presence in the City. For such a foundation, we need help. Philanthropic literary angels are invited to descend upon us! [For more information, or to contribute, contact City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133. 415/362-8193.]

A few years ago I gave a talk in Michael McClure's class at the California College of Arts & Crafts, the title of which was "Why don't you paint something important?" (There was a graffito on the wall that said "You're so minimal.") Anyway, it was an attempt to pry the artists, like the poets, out of their hermetic words.

Well, I'm still on the same kick.

Most poets today still exist in a kind of poetry ghetto. They get pittances for published poems, compared to prose writers, even in mass media periodicals, if they manage to get in at all. And poetry readings don't begin to pay the rent for most.

What to do about it? How to get out of the poetry ghetto? The answer is obvious. Write poems that say something supremely original and supremely important, which everyone aches to hear, poetry that cries out to be heard, poetry that's news. And is it naive to think that even the mass media might print it or air it, if it were a new kind of news?