Althouse: Willfully and lewdly printing indecent writings.

February 26, 2021

Willfully and lewdly printing indecent writings.

Screen grab:

25 comments:

John henry said...: I've never understood why poets and poetry is such a big deal.

Otoh, ferlinghetti was one of the poets Ive enjoyed dipping into from time to time from the 60s til today.

I had no idea he was still alive or that he was so old.

Gonna have to pull his books down and have a good read when I get home.

John Henry; 2/26/21, 8:28 AM
Wince said...: The legally operative word Ferlinghetti used is obscene not indecent.

He recounts Ginsburg at a rally turning to him asking, "What if we're wrong?"

It's not just Eisenhower who grows more benign in retrospect.; 2/26/21, 8:35 AM
John henry said...: He even wrote a poem about underwear.

Men wear it to hold things down,

Women wear it to hold things up.

Even the Pope wears underwear.

Quoted from memory.

He also wrote one that began "come let us leave this world behind" that iam trying to remember and can't. Duck doesn't turn up anything either.

It's been a while, I'm probably misremembering it.

John Henry; 2/26/21, 8:36 AM
Spiros said...: The 1960s ruined literature. Before -- Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, John Dos Passos, John Steinbeck, Norman Mailer, James Jones, Mary McCarthy, John Updike, Saul Bellow, Truman Capote and Bernard Malamud. After? Allen Ginsburg's Howl.

Thanks but no thanks...; 2/26/21, 8:40 AM
Francisco D said...: I first encountered Ferlingetti's poem Dog as a college freshman.

It was a revelation, but I was a lefty then. I am no longer a lefty, but the poem still speaks to me.; 2/26/21, 8:41 AM
chickelit said...: R.I.P.; 2/26/21, 8:42 AM
Tom T. said...: I didn't watch the video, but the screen grab looks like he's prepping for some sort of "Black Like Me" experience.; 2/26/21, 8:57 AM
Iman said...: Snapsnapsnapsnapsnapsnapsnapsnap.; 2/26/21, 9:21 AM
Howard said...: With a name like Ferlinghetti, you would think he was a Formula One driver.; 2/26/21, 9:41 AM
PM said...: They want to erect a statue of him in SF, which they'll tear down in a few years when they dig really deep into Wikipedia and find out something possibly offensive to maybe someone.; 2/26/21, 10:46 AM
Kevin said...: Sounds like unfettered conversation to me; 2/26/21, 10:51 AM
mikee said...: The horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to be viewed other than "poeticdally," must be correlated with the precedent history of Japan, including the Rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March, and the invastion of Okinawa to name just three events.; 2/26/21, 11:07 AM
Jupiter said...: Eisenhower was no angel.; 2/26/21, 11:12 AM
Lurker21 said...: The documentary about Ferlinghetti was one of the most boring films I've ever seen. Maybe the filmmakers were untalented or maybe the guy had a boring life in spite of (or because of) his bohemian affectations.

Ferlinghetti facts:

He changed his name from Ferling to Ferlinghetti. I had all kinds of theories about why, but it seems his father had originally changed the family name from Ferlinghetti to Ferling.

He was great friends with Winona Ryder and her family. Her father was in the same San Francisco writer/publisher/bookseller circles.

He had a lot to do with Allen Ginsberg and his poem "Howl." To find out more and see it all dramatized, watch one of the many Ginsberg films and not the boring Ferlinghetti documentary.

Is Ferlinghetti's passing the last nail in the coffin of the old bohemian San Francisco? Has everything that was wild and unruly and rebellious about the Bay Area for over a century now become bourgeois and respectable and empowered to ban, bar, shun, and cancel dissenters?; 2/26/21, 12:06 PM
m stone said...: I'm always amused at the respectability offered these anarchists of the past. Ferlinghetti in the 2007 video vs his rabble days is a striking contrast. He was and spoke grandfatherly later in life.

Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin of the Chicago Seven both morphed into capitalists in later life. Others probably followed.

m; 2/26/21, 12:41 PM
Tina Trent said...: I’m with Spiros. The Beats were pathetic. Ginsberg’s juvenalia is is far better than anything he wrote later: he had the privilege of inheriting a culture, learning through studying formal verse, then flushed it all down the toilet and preached to the kiddies he was screwing that they should reject what actually trained him to be a writer in the first place. Poetry today sucks because of Ginsberg. There’s a direct road from Howl to cancel culture — go figure. Naropa Institute bullshit. The story of the Sixties. Plus, in his case, and Leary’s, and other people poor Winona Rider’s parents exposed her to, the child-raping and child-drugging was real, and the free-speech rants were about defending using children sexually.; 2/26/21, 2:27 PM
Lurker21 said...: Ginsberg was a wild man. Most poets today aren't. They are people who get up in the middle of the night to go to the fridge and then write a poem about it. Maybe William Carlos Williams is to blame.

Increasingly, though, the refrigerator poets have to make way for the race/gender/sexual preference/postcolonial poets. That may not be an improvement.; 2/26/21, 2:49 PM
Howard said...: While the beats were fucking up the coastal elites, deplorables were enjoying the last golden age of Jim Crow. How do you people like the back of the bus? Keep up the good work.; 2/26/21, 2:51 PM
mezzrow said...: He got himself a heckuva run through life. I hope he's grateful for it.

City Lights is kind of a nifty space - I enjoyed visiting it. YMMV. I bought an interesting book concerning the significance of Muzak in American civilization.; 2/26/21, 2:59 PM
Tina Trent said...: So Howard, apropos to nothing, you’re implying that Trump voters are racists again.

When I read your posts, I picture Lena Dunham journaling.; 2/26/21, 3:27 PM
Robert Cook said...: "The 1960s ruined literature. Before -- Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, John Dos Passos, John Steinbeck, Norman Mailer, James Jones, Mary McCarthy, John Updike, Saul Bellow, Truman Capote and Bernard Malamud. After? Allen Ginsburg's Howl."

How can adding new voices and viewpoints and means of expression ruin literature? The writers you list above are all still in print, all still read. As long as the older writers are still read, are still available to be read, what harm have the newer writers to whom you object inflicted on the world of literature?; 2/26/21, 5:40 PM
Iman said...: He’s the guy that nearly ruined The Last Waltz with that sick little beat poem.; 2/26/21, 5:57 PM
Iman said...: Blogger Tina Trent said...
So Howard, apropos to nothing, you’re implying that Trump voters are racists again.

When I read your posts, I picture Lena Dunham journaling.

Heh... I picture Ted Levine’s “Buffalo Bill” character from The Silence of the Lambs...; 2/26/21, 6:03 PM
Narr said...: Crap writers were so much better back in my day!

Ever since Blortman strangled the short story, and Wun Yung Nookie tore the remains into itty-bitty pieces, and van Flemm burned them, and the National Book Critics Circle scattered them at sea, all the joy has vanished from my life.

Narr
Don't even mention epic poetry!; 2/26/21, 9:05 PM
Lurker21 said...: But the Beats didn't mess up the Coastal Elites. Elites, people who want to become elite, and people who want to stay elite are highly disciplined. If they're not, they eventually fall out of the elite. I suspect the Beats had more of an effect on a widespread, random sample of young Americans, and that's generally true for the forms of indiscipline that elites encourage in others and discourage in themselves and their children.

I suppose the older elites could afford one addict or scapegrace or disgrace, but too many were a disaster. The newer elites want to discourage even the one black sheep, if they can. The idea of meritocracy does a lot to control the young. They don't think they have privileges that automatically come with inherited wealth but see themselves as having to earn (and as having earned) what they get.; 2/27/21, 7:41 AM