Penguin Modern Poets - Gregory Corso - Lawrence Ferlinghetti - Allen Ginsberg

PENGUIN MODERN POETS –

GREGORY CORSO – LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI – ALLEN GINSBERG

Poetry used to always be published in expensive hardback books but during the 1960s and 1970s in an attempt to introduce contemporary poetry to the general reader a series of inexpensive paperbacks were published containing some thirty poems by each of three modern poets in a single volume. These were the Penguin Modern Poets and apparently the venture was an outstanding success.

There was an unlikely encounter once upon a time between Freddie Mercury and Sid Vicious where Freddie greeted Sid with a “Aha! Mr Ferocious!”, to which Sid replied “'Ello, Fred. Still trying to bring ballet to the masses are we?”

If true, this was an interesting exchange for not only Freddie's witty greeting but also for Sid's retort which was actually ambiguously multi-layered. Was Sid saying this so as to mock Freddie due to ballet being an uncool art form to try and foist upon the public, or was he implying that Freddie was on a hiding to nothing in trying to promote ballet as the general public were an ignorant bunch who would never appreciate it? Knowing Sid, it could have been either – or both. “I've met the man in the street,” as Sid is quoted as once saying “And he's a cunt.”

Poetry isn't all 'Moon in June' and chasing butterflies with nets though that's probably a not too uncommon perception. It all depends on how discerning the reader is and what they are presented with and what they discover by actively seeking or venturing out beyond the given horizons. As with anything, of course.

Penguin Books' endeavour to bring poetry to the masses was a noble one. Somebody back then obviously possessed of a love of poetry took a gamble and it paid off - and not only financially. The influence of this series is incalculable. The man on the street might well be a cunt, as Sid advised, but there is a vast number who are curious of mind and have a thirst for culture and knowledge only hindered by access and economics. Penguin Modern Poets was a solution and nothing less than a key to a kingdom.

The series is no longer available so can only nowadays be bought second-hand. Number 5, first published in 1963, features poems by Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Allen Ginsberg. The Beat poets, of course. Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg I've read before but for some reason I've not actually read a lot by Gregory Corso though I'm fully aware of who he is. 

The value in this book (and subsequently the whole series?) was instantly proven by it instigating me to read-up on and investigate Corso further. The wikipedia page on him was the obvious place to start and though badly composed, it was sufficient enough to nudge me to YouTube and various old interviews with him there along with recordings of him reciting some of his poems.

No frat boy was Corso but rather a product of deprivation and poverty, terrorised by time in jail at an early age but then also finding salvation there through encountering books by the classical poets. Another chance encounter – this time in a bar – with Allen Ginsberg led to further salvation through him becoming an integral inner circle member of the Beat poets.

That's not to single Corso out for special attention in this book, however, because none of the poets featured are any better than the other. There are no single lines to quote and no particular poems to highlight for special praise. They are all equally good.

No, on reading this book it caused something else and that was to consider the meaning of being a poet and why anyone would choose to be one? There's no money in it, that's for sure, so why bother? According to Plato, “at the touch of love everyone becomes a poet” and therein lies the answer. No-one writes a poem from a position of hate. As Che Guevara even once said: “At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.”

To be a poet and to compose a poem is in itself an act of love. It's a declaration of having love in one's heart. A declaration of love. A declaration of being alive and an inkling of being aware of what that might mean. To write even just one poem in your life is a life well spent. Whether a poem is any good or not is academic. Subjective. Every act of creativity in whatever medium is meaningful. One act leads to another to another and to another. Corso, Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, Kerouac et al begat the beatniks who begat the hippies who begat the punks along with a million other off-shoots along the way including me sat on a train writing these thoughts down.

All this from a book bought for 10p in a second-hand shop in Exmouth. It can't be bad.

John Serpico

Wholly Communion

WHOLLY COMMUNION

On the 11th of June 1965, 7000 people packed into the Royal Albert Hall in London for an evening of poetry. Hardly imaginable these days, of course: 7000 people? To hear some poems? It was, however, a pivotal event. An accidentally momentous occasion. Arguably, it was the moment when in Britain the Sixties began and British counterculture birthed.

The event was titled the International Poetry Reading and was organised by (among others) poet and film maker John Esam and artist Dan Richter. Coinciding with a visit to England by Allen Ginsberg, the idea was hatched to book for one evening the biggest venue in London so as to host him and to stage what was in effect, a Happening. So, just two weeks before the arrival of Ginsberg, the Albert Hall was booked, leaving very little time for publicity or for general organising.

The spontaneity of it all, however, acted as fuel to the rocket and within that short space not only had all the mainstream media (including, even, the bastion of the Establishment, the Times newspaper) been successfully approached and publicity garnered but a number of other internationally known poets and artists stepped up and offered their support, including Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, Michael Horovitz, and Alexander Trocchi.

Come the evening, to the surprise of everyone (not least the organisers) 7000 people turned up; this being the largest audience ever assembled to hear poetry in the country. Flowers from nearby Covent Garden market were handed out to everyone on entry by girls with painted faces, whilst inside the Hall, the robot creations of artist Bruce Lacey whirled around as a recording of William Burroughs' dry, reptile voice crackled over a pall of pot smoke.

"I don't want that sort of filth here." said the Albert Hall's manager "Would you send your teenage daughter to hear that sort of thing?" But his was the voice of culture past and Allen Ginsberg et al were the voices of the future, the audience being the forward thinkers aware of something in the air signifying the times they were a-changin'.

Wholly Communion, published shortly after the event, is a mixture of photographs of the various poets performing there along with some of the poems they recited. Such was the significance of the event, however, that to capture and convey it is no easy task though it should be said the book doesn't purport this to be its aim. Rather, it's a snapshot or rather still, a version of the event. Just as film maker Peter Whitehead describes the documentary film he made of it (which is up on YouTube) , it's an "impression of a unique evening".

Up against some stiff competition, Lawrence Ferlinghetti's poem To Fuck Is To love Again stands out but the poet that steals the show is Adrian Mitchell, in particular with his poem To Whom It May Concern.

What the International Poetry Reading at the Royal Albert Hall (and subsequently the book, Wholly Communion) teaches us is that a small number of people when they come together to act, can achieve great things. Booking the biggest venue in London for a few poets to perform at was a case of taking the bull by the horns and simply going for it. They were probably daunted and no doubt scared but their enthusiasm and belief in what they were doing carried them through - and they won.

Up until that evening in June of 1965 there were all these thousands of people in their homes and communities, all isolated and unaware of each other's existence. The Poetry Reading brought them all together under one roof and showed there were others like them and that they were not alone. Inspired by this revelation all number of activities and ventures were launched, not least the publication of what was to become a leading voice of the British counterculture, the International Times newspaper.

And then there's the power and importance of the written and spoken word. The importance of poems, songs, books, magazines and any other medium that might carry words. The primacy of the words being the key. The medium not being the message but the words within and the message and meaning that those words convey. And then the imagination, the belief, and the courage to externalise those words into real life and into living action.

                                                                                                                                                                             John Serpico

The Beat Scene - Edited by Elias Wilentz

THE BEAT SCENE - Edited by ELIAS WILENTZ

When you go to the music section of any bookshop nowadays you'll see any number of books detailing and documenting in photos the story of a plethora of bands, solo singers, musical events and scenes. It's an industry and it goes with the territory that where there are photos available there will one day be published a book of them; and long may it be so, I say, as it's a genre of books I quite enjoy.

The Internet has obviously had an effect on this once-cornered market of photo-documentary books, particularly platforms such as tumblr, which is a very good thing, I think. For all that, however, you still can't beat the physical medium of looking at photos in a book (or a magazine) as opposed to viewing them on a screen. And you never will.

Published in 1960, The Beat Scene is probably one of the first of this kind of book. Edited by Eliaz Wilentz, it documents as it says in the blurb on the back cover, 'the world of the young bohemian writers of New York's Greenwich Village'. To this end, it includes a large number of black and white photographs of all the poets of that time who whether by accident or design had picked up the mantel of 'Beatnik'. Alongside the photos there is also one poem from each of them plus essays from others describing the beat scene.

The photographs themselves capture a sense of something very fresh and exciting happening, particularly in those depicting the poets in full flow, reciting their poems to a rapt and attentive audience. All the usual suspects are here - Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky - but also a whole host of others that I'd never heard of before.

Regarding the poems themselves, two stand out: Playmates by Ted Jones, and Tentative Description of a Dinner Given to Promote the Impeachment of President Eisenhower by Lawrence Ferlinghetti; both for the simple reason of having a political edge to them. And being politicised - much to the chagrin of Jack Kerouac - was what gave the Beats an edge which without having would have left them as being just a bunch of would-be-poets writing about clouds and chasing butterflys with nets in the countryside.

The Beats, of course, begat the hippies and the hippies begat the punks; with the punks being the full-stop at the end of the exclamation mark. That's putting it very simply as there was obviously very many other factors and influences involved in the process but without the Beats there would never have been Punk and without Punk I wouldn't be the person I am today and I wouldn't be writing this and you, child, wouldn't be reading it.

As George Santayana once said: 'Those who fail to remember the past are condemned to repeat it'.

John Serpico

Love In The Days Of Rage - Lawrence Ferlinghetti

LOVE IN THE DAYS OF RAGE - 
LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI

Lawrence Ferlinghetti waxes lyrical over May '68 and apart from a lack of paragraphs what do we get? Well, to be honest it's hard to tell. It's a sumptuous read but behind the poetical writing and the literary allusions, what's at its core? I only ask because of the book's subject matter and because of who Ferlinghetti is. You would think it would have a meaning to it, if not a message? In fact, I demand a meaning and a message precisely because of its subject matter and who it's written by.

Ferlinghetti's no fool and he has form but neither are we and we got form too, eh, kids? This is 2015 moving into 2016 after all. You know, these are the days of miracle and wonder, of the bomb in the baby carriage wired to the radio. So with this in mind and with my rose-tinted glasses tucked firmly away I read Love In The Days Of Rage.

Set in Paris, 1968, it's a story of a 40 year-old American art teacher by the name of Annie; meeting, dating and falling in love with a 55 year-old Portuguese banker called Julian. It's Spring and France is in crisis state as students riot and workers strike. Revolution is just a shot away but what can a pair of lovers do apart from contemplate their navels and be swept along by the tide of events?

Being a teacher at a University, Annie is closer to the action than Julian simply because all her students are out in the streets and it would be rude not to join them. Of the two of them, however, it's Julian who talks the talk as he opens up about his past as an anti-fascist anarchist. But does he walk the walk?

As the story unfolds it becomes clear that he doesn't and is, in fact, cynical beyond belief. In his eyes he's top anarchist and all his old comrades who he now hates are 'lumpenproletariat, made only for slavery, for continued slavery. They wanted "liberty" for everyone, in the abstract, but they couldn't give full liberty to anyone to act on his own'.

So since those days of his youth he's abandoned his comrades and struck out on his own to worm his way into the heart of the system, in a bid to bring about its downfall from within. Only he, amongst all other revolutionaries is serious. Only his vision is right. Only his path the true one. Rather than working with others to overthrow the machine, he sees himself as the poison within it. And as for the student revolution going on outside his very window: 'They'll have their little 'summers of love'... their beautiful little fires of rebellion will burn so bright - and then - pouf - out like a smoking wick with the first winds of winter... swept away by nothing more than the ticking of the clock, all of them graduated into the real world...'.

Annie rightfully accuses him of being a hypocrite because for all his holier-than-thou ideas on how and how not to fulfil a revolution, the fact of the matter is that he's a banker earning a good living at the heart of the capitalist system.

Julian, however, has a plan. He has insider knowledge and knows that the Bank of France, in fear of Paris becoming an occupied city, is moving a very large part of its most valuable security bonds to a secret location out in the countryside. Julian intends blowing to smithereens the train on which the bonds are being transported, destroying the whole lot with one very powerful plastic bomb.

And that's it. That's his big idea. That's what makes him top anarchist. Blow up the Bank of France's securities and then run to the hills, spending the rest of his days hiding out with his girlfriend.

It's not a bad idea as such but to hold it above all other ideas is just plain wrong. Revolution is horses for courses and a student rioting in the street is just as valid and worthy as a worker striking, a pamphleteer handing out leaflets, a person feeding the homeless, a person raising their fist, a person raising their voice, a person inciting violence, a person calling for peace, a person offering hope, a person offering love, or indeed a person blowing up a train full of money.

As isolated actions they're all just drops in the ocean but when in conjunction with other actions it's an alternative. A revolution, even.

Any successful, effective revolution is a many-headed hydra. If one head is cut off, there's another in its place. A single-headed revolution can easily be defeated but not so a many-headed one. Does Lawrence Ferlinghetti not understand this? If so, then it's not the message his book conveys.

You can't tell if they're based on anyone in real life but Annie and Julian aren't very likeable characters. He's cynical and has an ego problem, she's a dope for putting up with his bollocks. And for someone who says their father once had an affair with Emma Goldman, she's actually quite boring. An armchair Lefty.

What saves the book is Ferlinghetti's descriptions of the unfolding events of May '68. In fact, he does a very good job of it. All the slogans are in there such as 'Under the paving stones, the beach', 'Be reasonable - demand the impossible', 'A cop sleeps in each of us. You have to kill him', and one of my favourites: 'Those who make a revolution by halves dig their own graves'.

There's also a couple of mentions of bibliophile George Whitman and his Shakespeare & Co bookstore which are rather sweet, particularly a description of Whitman rushing about thrusting glasses of tea or punch and cups of soup into strangers' hands as if they were survivors of a war. Which in a way of course, they were, following the bouts of street fighting right outside his shop.

As for meaning and message, however, Love In The Days Of Rage offers very little that is of any use to the modern day anarchist romancer; pandering instead to a flabby nostalgia for radical days now lost in the eiderdown of middle-aged, middle class, middle-of-the-road ennui.

John Serpico