APRIL IS POETRY MONTH - LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI

 

   Terrible at poetry I always was.  I could memorize a line or two for a class in middle school. I could always remember lyrics to songs, which you might call poetry at times.  But as to the highbrow poets such as Emily Dickinson,  Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Rainer Maria Rilke, and higher, I wasn't very keen.  My mother loved poetry, wrote it and read it often.  I actually did write two poems of which I was proud - one about the lemon tree in my back yard, one about my fury at being bossed by a not so nice roommate in college.  They were both effective writings.  But I gave up, as I had given up on art when the art teacher in 2nd grade told me I couldn't paint, and proceeded to paint my picture for me. Imagine!
   There were poems that I did like at various times.  And I still own my copy of A Coney Island of the Mind which contains my favorite poem:

CHRIST CLIMBED DOWN

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no gilded Christmas trees
and no tinsel Christmas trees
and no tinfoil Christmas trees
and no pink plastic Christmas trees
and no gold Christmas trees
and no black Christmas trees
and no powderblue Christmas trees
hung with electric candles
and encircled by tin electric trains
and clever cornball relatives

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no intrepid Bible salesmen
covered the territory
in two-tone cadillacs
and where no Sears Roebuck crèches
complete with plastic babe in manger
arrived by parcel post
the babe by special delivery
and where no televised Wise Men
praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no fat handshaking stranger
in a red flannel suit
and a fake white beard
went around passing himself off
as some sort of North Pole saint
crossing the desert to Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
in a Volkswagen sled
drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer
with German names
and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts
from Saks Fifth Avenue
for everybody’s imagined Christ child

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no Bing Crosby carolers
groaned of a tight Christmas
and where no Radio City angels
iceskated wingless
thru a winter wonderland
into a jinglebell heaven
daily at 8:30
with Midnight Mass matinees

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary’s womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody’s anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable
and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest
of Second Comings

http://www.blogcitylights.com/2012/12/17/a-coney-island-of-the-mind/  

     This is clearly a 1950s poem - that speaks to the excesses of materialism that were so universal at the time.  Post World War II prosperity gave each family a home, each man a job, each woman a home to clean, or some such fiction.  It conjures up in my memory a series of videos produced to show how Freud was used to bring about the greatest greed fest in the world - the materialism and acquisitiveness, as well as control of the people of the United States.   "Part two explores how those in power in post-war America used Freud's ideas about the unconscious mind to try and control the masses. Politicians and planners came to believe Freud's underlying premise that deep within all human beings were dangerous and irrational desires."

   I won't belabor the meaning. You can decide for yourselves.  But clearly I like message poetry.  I hope with this exploration into poetry to broaden my horizons a bit.

City Lights - http://www.citylights.com/ferlinghetti/  

A Century of the Self - http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-century-of-the-self/