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| Ferlinghetti's Schedule of Readings & Events Books by Lawrence Ferlinghetti New Poems:
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Lawrence Ferlinghetti (delivered November 16, 2005 at the National Book Awards on receiving the Literarian Award for outstanding service to the literary community) |
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| That the National Book Foundation saw fit to create a new award of Literarian at its annual prize-giving ceremony in New York this past November 16 is certainly a recognition that literacy itself is under attack in our electronic age and needs to be recognized and rewarded. “Literarian” sounds a bit Old School, and the word probably had its roots in some Ivy League or English cloister. A smart friend of mine told me, “It’s for old guys.” I hope not. Above all, it must be for the young. I come from a generation that assumed you would know the allusion when someone referred to Prufrock or Stephen Dedalus, Maud Gonne or Godot, Penelope’s unraveling her weaving at night, or Dover Beach or Walden Pond, or lilacs that last in the dooryard bloomed. The absence of writers of color from this canon is shocking, but no one thought of that back then, in the last White century. Today, with the continuing dumbing down of America, literarians are definitely an endangered species, to the point that articles have to be written to define the term. It’s not true President Bush believes that anyone caught reading a book should be banned from government. But the barbarians are certainly at the gates, and our dominant commercial culture welcomes them. This culture may globalize the world, devastating indigenous historic traditions, but it is not our mainstream culture. The true mainstream is made, not of oil, but of writers and readers, musicians and composers, editors and publishers, bookstores and libraries and universities, and all the institutions that support them. And this is the culture that will survive, if anything survives, after the electricity goes off and all electronic civilization fades away, when Nature strikes back in retaliation for what we’re doing to it. Coming soon to your local theater, the Day After Tomorrow. There’s much finger pointing as to who is most guilty in all this. Some say it’s the omnivorous consumer culture. Some say it’s the old military-industrial perplex. Some say it’s the result of the predatory cabal of the military and the corporations. Of course, it’s all of these, plus overpopulation, which is the root to which most major world problems can be traced. Take your choice. And then it would be quite helpful if you went out and did something about it. As Scoop Nisker used to say on his KSAN talk show, “If you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own.” After all, in spite of illiteracy, war, and the assault on nature – ARE THERE NOT STILL FIREFLIES Are there not still fireflies Are there not still four-leaf clovers Is not our land still beautiful Our fields not full of armed enemies Our cities never bombed to oblivion Never occupied by iron armies speaking iron tongues Are not our warriors still valiant ready to defend us Are not our senators still wearing fine togas Are we not still a great people Is this not still a free country Are not our fields still ours our gardens still full of flowers our ships with full cargoes Why then do some still fear the barbarians are coming coming coming in their huddled masses (What is that sound that fills the ear drumming drumming?) Is not Rome still Rome Is not Los Angeles still Los Angeles Are these really the last days of the Roman Empire Is not beauty still beauty And truth still truth Are there not still poets Are there not still lovers Are there not still mothers sisters and brothers Is there not still a full moon once a month Are there not still fireflies Are there not still stars at night Can we not still see them in bowl of night signalling to us our so-called manifest destinies? |
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