Poetry as Insurgent Art

Pity the Nation

Pity the nation whose people are sheep and whose shepherds mislead them.

Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced, and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.

Pity the nation that raises not its voice except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.

Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own and no other culture but its own.

Pity the nation whose breath is money and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.

Pity the nation, oh pity the people, who allow their rights to erode and their freedoms to be washed away.

My country tears of thee

Sweet land of liberty

By Lawrence Ferlinghetti (author and poet)

As read by Ferlinghetti in an hour long interview on Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/2007/12/24/legendary_beat_generation_bookseller_and_poet

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti is author of the new book: Poetry as Insurgent Art.

In a review of Ferlinghetti’s book, the San Francisco Chronicle article states:

“I am signaling you through the flames,” he begins in the new section from which his book takes its title. “The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it.”

Poetry, in this vision, must be a political statement, arrows slung for freedom of expression, thought and resistance.

“Write living newspapers,” he counsels. “Your poems must be more than want ads for broken hearts”

– in other words, to paraphrase Bertolt Brecht, to write mere “love poetry” in such times is “almost a crime.”

So “challenge capitalism masquerading as democracy”;

“Liberate have-nots and enrage despots”;

“Don’t cater to the Middle Mind of America nor to consumer society.”

“Be committed to something outside yourself.”

“What Is Poetry?”

“life lived with poetry in mind is itself an art.”

“poetry is the shortest distance between two humans,”

“the anarchy of the senses making sense”

“it is a pulsing fragment of the inner life, an untethered music” which “restores wonder and innocence.”

“Wake up, the world’s on fire!”

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/30/RVLRU031F.DTL&type=books

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Here’s my question: Isn’t it time for the poets, the prophets, the common folk of America with vision and hope to step up and speak out???

Posted in: Living with open hands