Lawrence Ferlinghetti is much in the news
at the moment: he’s 96 years old and has
recently published his travel journals, and his letters to and from Allen
Ginsberg.
So I decided to
read his 1958 poem “Autobiography.” I’m
not sure if it’s a very good poem but I like parts of it a lot. It starts out really well:
I am leading a quiet
life
in Mike’s Place every
day
watching the champs
of the Dante Billiard
Parlor
and the French pinball
addicts.
But then it gets a bit too “poetic” for my
tastes – there seems to have been a point in literary history when few Americans
could write a poem without name-dropping Ezra Pound. But the part of “autobiography” I like best,
for obvious reasons, runs as follows.
I am leading a quiet life
outside of Mike’s Place every
day
watching the world walk by
in its curious shoes.
I once started out
to walk around the world
but ended up in Brooklyn.
That Bridge was too much for
me.
That’s nice isn’t it? And funny too – and of course you could walk
around the world and still end up in Brooklyn.
And obviously it begs the question of which side of the bridge was he
when he found it too much.
I’ve walked in Brooklyn, and certainly
walked over the Brooklyn Bridge, and I’ve also walked in the alley than runs behind
Ferlinghetti’s City Lights bookshop in San Francisco - Kerouac Alley. Ferlinghetti worked hard to get the name changed.
And Ferlinghetti also has a street named after
him, Via Ferlinghetti, less visited than
Kerouac Alley I’m sure, but now on the
list of places I have to visit next time I’m in San Francisco.
Mr Ferlinghetti is a much photographed
fellow, but the only picture I can find of him actually walking, is this one, where he’s
with Jack Hirschman.
