Saturday 11 January 2014

Day 540: Constantly Risking Absurdity


What better poem to typify a Saturday than a Beats one?  Lawrence Ferlinghetti - the man who published Ginsberg's 'Howl' was also a poet in his own right. He even earned the term Poet Laureate of San Francisco. Here he is, in the characteristic Beat manner of exhilarating blank verse expressionism, on writing:


Constantly Risking Absurdity - Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of the day
performing entrachats
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
and all without mistaking
any thing
for what it may not be
For he's the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap
And he
a little charley  chaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence

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