A Coney Island of the Mind: Poems
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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Book Summary Information
Author: Lawrence FerlinghettiEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1968-01-17
ISBN: 0811200418
Number of pages: 93
Publisher: New Directions
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780811200417
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of A Coney Island of the Mind: Poems
Book Review: "I have risked enchantment..."
Summary: 5 Stars
... I first read those words oh so many years ago, in the poem "Autobiography," and through the proverbial twists of fate, I've come to live in the Land thereof. There were those initial attractions when this book first came out, the black and white covers of New Directions paperbacks, the visceral title for one who had been to that "down market" fantasy land, Coney Island. Both announced a "path less traveled" from an industry of much hyped "best-sellers" of the big publishing houses. And on the first reading there were the appealing cadences and the tugs to the inchoate feelings that the path more traveled wasn't going to be just right, as in the poems "I Am Waiting" and "Christ Climbed Down." Imagine being outraged about the commercialization of Christmas so far back; Today we'd be nostalgic for those days we'd consider authentic. Prescient Ferlinghetti was also, in "Autobiography," when he said: "I see another war is coming..." for my own autobiography, and the war I was in, and later still, for the war my children were invited to.
But re-reading it some 40 years on, and there is a much deeper appreciation. I've read many of the books and seen the paintings that he makes allusions to, sometimes subtly, sometimes more straightforwardly. There is Hieronymous Bosch, Goya, Robin in Djuana Barnes' "Nightwood," the ending to Joyce's "Ulysses," Thomas Wolfe's "a leaf, a stone, an unfound door," Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath," and Kafka's "Castle." Did he really make it to the Vaucluse to see the summer of sauterelles? Learning French helps in understanding also. What he was trying to say just makes so much more SENSE the second time around, now that you can "get" the analogies without footnotes.
Some lines hit the bull's eye for what we would become: "...on a concrete continent spaced with bland billboards illustrating imbecile illusions of happiness..." and "...from Lost Angeles to Heaven and promising Free Elections..." Also there is a most fitting rebuke, in the best New Directions' traditions, to the high priests of culture: "'Truth is not the secret of a few' yet you would maybe think so the way some librarians and cultural ambassadors and especially museum directors act, you'd think they had a corner on it the way they walk around shaking their high heads and looking as if they never went to the bath room or anything."
Lawrence Ferlinghetti will turn 90 this month, and congratulations are being accepted at the book store he founded, City Lights Books in San Francisco. Thanks for pointing the way; it took some of us a while to get there. An initial read, or a re-read would be a fitting celebration.
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