Challenges to Young Poets [Ferlinghetti]
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greatpoetryCHALLENGES TO YOUNG POETS
-- Lawrence Ferlinghetti
# Invent a new language anyone can understand.
# Climb the Statue of Liberty.
# Reach for the unattainable.
# Kiss the mirror and write what you see and hear.
# Dance with wolves and count the stars, including the unseen.
# Be naive, innocent, non-cynical, as if you had just landed on earth (as indeed you have, as indeed we all have), astonished by what you have fallen upon.
# Write living newspapers. Be a reporter from outer space, filing dispatches to some supreme managing editor who believes in full disclosure and has a low tolerance level for hot air.
# Write an endless poem about your life on earth or elsewhere.
# Read between the lines of human discourse.
# Avoid the provincial, go for the universal.
# Think subjectively, write objectively.
# Think long thoughts in short sentences.
# Don’t attend poetry workshops, but if you do, don’t go to learn "how to" but to learn "what" (What’s important to write about).
# Don’t bow down to critics who have not themselves written great masterpieces.
# Resist much, obey less.
# Secretly liberate any being you see in a cage.
#.Write short poems in the voice of birds. Make your lyrics truly lyrical. Birdsong is not made by machines. Give your poem wings to fly to the treetops.
# The much-quoted dictum from William Carlos Williams,"No ideas but in things," is OK for prose, but it lays a dead hand on lyricism, since "things" are dead.
# Don’t contemplate your navel in poetry and think the rest of the world is going to think it’s important.
# Remember everything, forget nothing..
# Work on a frontier, if you can find one.
# Go to sea, or work near water, and paddle your own boat.
# Associate with thinking poets. They’re hard to find.
# Cultivate dissidence and critical thinking. "First thought, best thought" may not make for the greatest poetry. First thought may be worst thought.
.
# What’s on your mind? What do you have in mind? Open your mouth and stop mumbling.
# Don't be so open-minded that your brains fall out.
# Question everything and everyone. Be subversive, constantly questioning reality and the status quo.
# Be a poet, not a huckster. Don’t cater, don’t pander, especially not to possible audiences, readers, editors, or publishers.
# Come out of your closet. It’s dark in there.
# Raise the blinds, throw open your shuttered windows, raise the roof, unscrew the locks from the doors, but don’t throw away the screws.
# Be committed to something outside yourself. Be militant about it. Or ecstatic.
# To be a poet at sixteen is to be sixteen, to be a poet at 40 is to be a poet. Be both.
# Wake up, the world’s on fire!
# Have a nice day.
-- Lawrence Ferlinghetti
# Invent a new language anyone can understand.
# Climb the Statue of Liberty.
# Reach for the unattainable.
# Kiss the mirror and write what you see and hear.
# Dance with wolves and count the stars, including the unseen.
# Be naive, innocent, non-cynical, as if you had just landed on earth (as indeed you have, as indeed we all have), astonished by what you have fallen upon.
# Write living newspapers. Be a reporter from outer space, filing dispatches to some supreme managing editor who believes in full disclosure and has a low tolerance level for hot air.
# Write an endless poem about your life on earth or elsewhere.
# Read between the lines of human discourse.
# Avoid the provincial, go for the universal.
# Think subjectively, write objectively.
# Think long thoughts in short sentences.
# Don’t attend poetry workshops, but if you do, don’t go to learn "how to" but to learn "what" (What’s important to write about).
# Don’t bow down to critics who have not themselves written great masterpieces.
# Resist much, obey less.
# Secretly liberate any being you see in a cage.
#.Write short poems in the voice of birds. Make your lyrics truly lyrical. Birdsong is not made by machines. Give your poem wings to fly to the treetops.
# The much-quoted dictum from William Carlos Williams,"No ideas but in things," is OK for prose, but it lays a dead hand on lyricism, since "things" are dead.
# Don’t contemplate your navel in poetry and think the rest of the world is going to think it’s important.
# Remember everything, forget nothing..
# Work on a frontier, if you can find one.
# Go to sea, or work near water, and paddle your own boat.
# Associate with thinking poets. They’re hard to find.
# Cultivate dissidence and critical thinking. "First thought, best thought" may not make for the greatest poetry. First thought may be worst thought.
.
# What’s on your mind? What do you have in mind? Open your mouth and stop mumbling.
# Don't be so open-minded that your brains fall out.
# Question everything and everyone. Be subversive, constantly questioning reality and the status quo.
# Be a poet, not a huckster. Don’t cater, don’t pander, especially not to possible audiences, readers, editors, or publishers.
# Come out of your closet. It’s dark in there.
# Raise the blinds, throw open your shuttered windows, raise the roof, unscrew the locks from the doors, but don’t throw away the screws.
# Be committed to something outside yourself. Be militant about it. Or ecstatic.
# To be a poet at sixteen is to be sixteen, to be a poet at 40 is to be a poet. Be both.
# Wake up, the world’s on fire!
# Have a nice day.
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no subject
Date: 2005-03-23 03:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-23 03:46 am (UTC)# Kiss the mirror and write what you see and hear.
and
Read between the lines of human discourse.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-23 04:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-23 04:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-23 04:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-23 04:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-23 04:56 am (UTC)And I'm just as bad about books ;)
no subject
Date: 2005-03-23 05:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-23 04:41 am (UTC)# Don't be so open-minded that your brains fall out.
and so it's good to see who actually said it.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-23 04:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-23 12:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-23 01:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-24 12:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-24 01:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-24 02:36 pm (UTC)Thanks for posting this!