[New-Poetry] Poetry as Insurgent Art

[jforjames at aol.com]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/30/RVLRU031F.DTL&type=books
Ferlinghetti argues that poetry can save the world
Steve Heilig

Sunday, December 30, 2007
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Poetry as Insurgent Art
By Lawrence Ferlinghetti
NEW DIRECTIONS; 90 PAGES; $12.95
What is the "use" of poetry? Or, as more than one author has asked, Can Poetry Matter?

More than 50 years ago, renowned American poet William Carlos Williams wrote famously that "It is difficult/ to get the news from poems/ yet men die miserably every day/ for lack/ of what is found there."


A practical man who was not only a poet but also a practicing physician, Williams' lines are usually read to imply that poetry - good poetry, at least - is essential to one's inner life and spirit. In the cultural doldrums of the early 1950s, that rang true for many people.

Around the same time Williams wrote those lines, Lawrence Ferlinghetti arrived in San Francisco,


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