Coney Island of His Mind
Yesterday Lawrence Ferlinghetti was interviewed by Amy Goodman in her show, Democracy Now! The interview can be listened, watched or read on this web page or downloaded on itunes podacast. It’s an hour conversation in which Ferlinghetti talks, among other things, about his poems, about his City Lights bookstore, Allen Ginberg, Jack Kerouac and his visit to Cuba with Pablo Neruda. Don’t miss it!
Here an excerpt:
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Lawrence Ferlinghetti your advice to young people, young poets, to citizens of the world.
LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI: Do you have to be a poet? If you don’t have to be a poet, be a prose writer. You’ll get further faster. Poetry — there’s probably more poetry published today than any time in the history of the world. Nevertheless, there is this — people think they have this blindness when they see a line in the typography of poetry, and it just blocks them. So if you can say the same thing in prose, you’ll probably be better off.
