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ferlingetti_archer | Poem

February 18, 2001...
Lawrence Ferlingetti's advice, David Archer's rebut,

27 November, 2005...
Pen Chant's after rebutt

L.F. - Invent a new language anyone can understand.

D.A. - Just write fifty poems a day and one of them might have a good line or two. Never give up. Keep writing every day like a cafe-slave for the rest of your long poor chapbook life. And steal from other poets too, like Ginsberg and Bowie.

P.C. - Blessed are the peacemakers because they are not jealous. When a new thought is worth more than gold and can not be repeated too many times. Any good art teacher will tell you there are times when the same form of creativity breaks out in one part of the world it may well break out in  several other parts in the very same period of time - like Cubism. Picasso is considered the master of Cubism because he was the one that excelled enough that it is still being copied - but not quite, perhaps a new tweak. No one can reproduce a master's picture exactly, nor write a new poem exactly like a master poet - in any poetic dispute over copyright, the proof is in that challenge.

When a student repeats the lines of a master he is only saying "I get it!"
When a teacher decides he is no longer a student he is also no longer a teacher.
When a master discovers a student excels him he responds "I love it!"

D.A. - Leonardo da Vinci said: "Make one thousand drawings and ONE of them MIGHT be good". Ditto.

P.C. - Ditto, in this case, is from Master Leonardo da Vinci - the student Ferlinghetti. But/and of course no master (in this case of poetry) calls himself master - others do.

L.F. - Climb the Statue of Liberty.

D.A. - What, and jump? So fine, climb down the Statue of Liberty. Then what? Take the elevator back up? I know, go shoplift a four hundred dollar Mont Blanc pen and write a poem about it. It's a joke ... don't steal.

P.C. - Climb the Statue of Liberty is a metaphor. Got metaphor Mr. Archer?

L.F. - Reach for the unattainable.

D.A. - Why would anyone even try that? Look, this is the BS "they" always say after some clown jumps a pogo stick to the top of Everest or something. It's stupid. If something is unattainable, forget it. Reach for the ATTAINABLE and you will be amazed where it will take you --- to the truly "unattainable". The real question is why "wise elders" have been teaching this same advice for the past two thousand years. Could it be they are protecting job security through misdirection: THE OLD: Established Artist's Secret Snipe Hunt Sidestep.

P.C. - Oh, shades of Johnathan Livingston Seagull! Or, shot for the stars you might land on Mars!

L.F. - Kiss the mirror and write what you see and hear.

D.A. -This guy is a narcissistic Beatnik ... watch out for him. If he ever invites you to City Lights Bookstore and tells you take the stairs to the basement and whisper, "Larry, Larry" decline. Go to a movie instead. You can get ten good poems from one bad movie.

P.C. - Blessed be a poet who can sit naked in front of his audience and read his own poetry.
When we reach for the unattainable, at least that which is attained is better than a bad movie.

L.F. - Dance with wolves.

D.A. - Speaking of wolves: the Beat Poet Laureate of San Francisco "borrowing" from Kevin Costner?

P.C. - A better question: Did Kevin Costner feel complimented? (I thought titles could not be copyrighted.) There was no monetary loss to Kevin Costner (that which copyright laws protect). Most likely Kevin Costner wants us all to learn to dance with wolves - perhaps because he wanted to undo Grimm's maligning wolves to children.

But yeah, sometimes writers and wannabe teachers use lies when they fear for children's safety. The problem with lies, lies in when the truth comes out. Or as Roger Ragtime says, "The closer we come to speaking truth, the less predictable the reaction to it."

L.F. - Count the stars, including the unseen.

D.A. - With a computer telescope I hope. Well, young poets like counting stars, that's true. One, two ... buckle my shoe, three, four ... shut the door ... five, six, pick up sticks, seven, eight, lay them straight ... nine, ten, a big fat hen ...

P.C. - Three, four...shut the door. In poetry this is known as a limerick. "Count the stars" - if he said "Give yourself the pleasure of going out at night and look up at the stars, try and count them you can not. Imagine some so far away you cannot see them with the naked eye." (I hope not with a computer telescope). There are real telescopes that give you a sense of the vastness of the universe - and you can still imagine there are stars beyond the stars of our strongest telescope. Space flight has given us more knowledge - but ask any astronaut if it feels the same looking at the pictures.

That's the spelled-out version for those who need it.

L.F. - Be naive, innocent, uncynical, as if you had just landed on earth, as indeed you have, as indeed we all have, astonished by what you have fallen upon.

D.A. - Like Larry's lap.

P.C. - Do I sense a phobia?

L.F. - Write living newspapers.

D.A. - What, I should be a tattoo artist? But, you said I could be a poet.

P.C. - Operative word: could be

Today's living newspapers are called bloggers, published day and night as the muse moves one. But and yes, tattoo artists too - it's called "listen to the children what they say" - kinda like graffiti for graphic minded children.

L.F. - Be a reporter from outer space, filing dispatches to some supreme managing editor who believes in full disclosure and has a low tolerance for hot air.

D.A. - And hope he never sees the advice you gave students at the City Wide School Poetry Festival.

P.C. - Funny thing about projections...it often turns out the projectoree is projecting their own bias. Kinda like a gossip finds himself offended by others that reflect his/her own faults.

L.F. - Read between the lines of human discourse.

D.A. - Read between the LIES. Hey, we're smart-apes, okay. Art-apes. A bunch of liars, especially poets. Don't mess with me. I know the Poet Brothers and they'll finish you.

P.C. - Yepper. Another ditto. Reminds me of Bill O'Reilly's Fox news presentation, and on this past thanksgiving day no less, he read an email from one of his viewers that disagreed with one of his pontifications and Mr. Billy said "We know who you are, we know where you are, so just watch what you say!" As if the words were not enough, he had the camera come in for a close up - pointing his index finger at his audience as he spoke. (An old authoritarian trick upon learning his jig is up).

L.F. - Avoid the provincial, go for the universal.

D.A. - Bull-shovel. Go for the provincial gritty detail. The waitress with a mole on her eyelid that flashes when she blinks. We identify the so-called UNIVERSAL, in Literature's gritty details --- the chipped shell, not the ocean.

P.C. - Hog-swallow. Get past the eyelid into the the universe in her eyes. When one "goes for the universal" poetically they find that which is believed to be personal is much larger - like Guernica - Picasso touched the pain of those who experienced that dastardly act and they cried openly, releasing some of their pain. (Oh no! Not the ocean - the waves the waves crashing crashing powerful powerful tooo scarry).

L.F. - Think subjectively, write objectively.

D.A. - Like IMAGINE riding a camel to the Great Pyramid and writing your name on it with a can of spray paint?

P.C. - To spell out: Think from a personal point of view but write from a trans personal view. A true artist would never write his own name on another's creation. But an egomaniac probably might.

L.F. - Don't bow down to critics who have not themselves written great masterpieces.

D.A. - Well, if you are lucky enough to have critics, pay attention to them --- they're probably right.

P.C. - Well, if you are lucky enough to have critics, pay attention to them --- they're probably right.

L.F. - Work on a frontier if you can find one, go to sea, or work near water and paddle your own boat.

D.A. - Paddle your own boat? There's one for Bartlett's Quotations.

P.C. - And here's one for David Archer: do you want someone else to paddle your boat?

L.F. - Associate with thinking poets, they're hard to find.

D.A. - Um hum.

P.C. - Um hum. (Where is poet David Mitchell when I need him most? Oh yeah, I remember, translating Russian.)

L.F. - Don't be so open minded that your brains fall out.

D.A. - Luckily all the young poets sitting in the audience that day were thinking, "jeeze ... are we getting lunch out of this?"

P.C. - How do you know when your brains fall out? When you believe your own personal thought is the thought of everyone in the audience, otherwise known as herd mentality.

L.F. - Be a poet, not a huckster. Don't cater, don't pander, especially not to possible audiences, readers, or editors, or publishers.

D.A. - Or young poets.

P.C. - Homophobia, homophobia, stay away from me.

L.F. - Come out of your closet, it's dark in there.

D.A. - Go back in your closet, it's dark in there.

P.C. - ooo fear, stay away from me

D.A. - Which is, of course --- and man oh man, do I have to explain everything --- yes, the mystic source of poetry and art. From the dark into the light. We know that. A tree sends roots into the black blood of the earth, where the slimmest nutrients are sucked up into The Tree of Life and Light, making all those trillions of shimmering Aspen leaves.

P.C. - ooo no mystic i know would call nutrients slimmy, but they might say "Fertlizer has no rights." (a P.M. quote)

L.F. - Be committed to something outside yourself. Be militant about it. Or ecstatic.

D.A. - Be committed to having the office of Poet Laureate of San Francisco abolished through a City Wide School Poetry Contest where the winning student gets to fire the Principle Poemster, with a poem, of course .

P.C. - ah, poetry contests, oh teachers of poetry, oooh PhD's, where is where is Aeschylus when when...

L.F. - To be a poet at 16 is to be 16. To be a poet at forty is to be a poet. Be both.

D.A. - Well, okay I guess ... but, I'm only 62 ...

P.C. - I'm only 71 and 1/2. The burning question is, Mr. Archer, can you be both?