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"On the Brink"

with

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

by

Jessa Lynne and Lee Kidd

Church of the Covenant, Boston, Massachusetts

November 8, 1993

[excerpted from SQUAWK Magazine, Issue #54]

 

 

Jessa:    We really enjoyed your reading from your most recent book, These Are My Rivers: New and Selected Poems from 1955-1993.

Lee:   How do the images come to you when you write your poetry?

Lawrence:   They come in different ways. I usually start with something that's real -- an experience, a person, a feeling, and approach it directly.

Lee:   Is that what you did with your poem, "Dog?"

Lawrence:    Yes, I just took a real dog, focused on it, and followed the flow. I wrote the poem in forty minutes, with just a typewriter. There were no computers then, which I think is just as well. It seems that poets now are so concerned with process, with the "how to." That's all the poetry workshops can talk about these days.

Lee:   We also really liked your poem about Waco, called "A Buddha in the Woodpile." May we publish it in SQUAWK?

Lawrence:    You can contact my publisher, New Directions in New York, and tell them that I give you permission to print that poem. [We did that in December 1993.] Tell them that you don't have any money, and that I really want you to have it -- as long as you tell them that it will appear in your small press magazine.

Lee:   All right, certainly. Thank you. We'll let them know that SQUAWK is not for profit, and that you gave us permission at your reading in Boston. We'll give all credit due.

Jessa:   So you say that you've been painting longer than doing poetry. Tell us more about that.

Lawrence:    Well, I was painting long before I got anything published -- even though this picture of Jack Powers that I did for tonight's program doesn't look like him, exactly! I first started painting in 1948, when I went to Paris to study art under the G.I. Bill. I've been painting ever since, and have been in many exhibitions. I also give talks and lectures on art.

Jessa:   What do you talk about during these sessions?

Lawrence:    I see art as a dream of reality, and not a transcription of it. In other words, since art is not a photographic reproduction of life, each work of art will have a different meaning to each person who views it.

Jessa:   Yes, it's open to each individual perception.

Lee   If you compare the scene in America today with what was happening during the time of the Beats, what would you say about the likeness or difference between then and now?

Lawrence:    America, to me, is on the brink -- it feels very similar again as it did just before HOWL came out. There is a certain feeling in the air. People are waiting for a new paradigm.

Jessa:   Yes, a new paradigm! You're saying that we're on the brink -- only seven years until the new millenia. So it'll be soon, do you think?

Lawrence:    I have no idea. Is SQUAWK an art magazine?

Jessa:   Yes, besides a featured interview in each issue, there's also poetry, prose, cartoons, and photographs. We've put out a total of 53 Issues so far, and we're just beginning to spread our wings and make a flap. The past two years, we've been taking SQUAWK to various book fairs, such as the Jack Kerouac Festival in Lowell, sponsored by the Stone Soup Poets, and to the Small Press Book Fair in New York City.

Lawrence:    That sounds like fun. SQUAWK, that's quite a title! Why do you use that title?

Lee:   It's mimicry, intransitive, spontaneous. It's a hard-to-control verb. It's incomplete, sometimes grating, it's hard to stifle. It can be thrilling, just the utterance of it -- not unlike HOWL, not unlike SQUEAL, not unlike all of us!

 

 

 

A BUDDHA IN THE WOODPILE

by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

If there had been only

one Buddhist in the woodpile

in Waco Texas

to teach us how to sit still

one saffron Buddhist in the back rooms

just one Tibetan lama

just one Taoist

just one Zen

just one Thomas Merton Trappist

just one saint in the wilderness

of Waco USA

If there had been only one

calm little Gandhi

in a white sheet or suit

one not-so-silent partner

who at the last moment shouted Wait

If there had been just one

majority of one

in the lotus position

in the inner sanctum

who bowed his shaved head to the

Chief of All Police

and raised his hands in a mudra

and chanted the Great Paramita Sutra

the Diamond Sutra

the Lotus Sutra

If there had somehow been

just one Gandhian spinner

with Brian Willson

at the gates of the White House

at the Gates of Eden

then it wouldn't have been

Vietnam once again

and its "One two three four

What're we waitin' for?"

If one single ray of the light

of the Dalai Lama

when he visited this land

had penetrated somehow

the Land of the Brave

where the lion never

lies down with the lamb--

But not a glimmer got through

The Security screened it out

screened out the Buddha

and his not-so-crazy wisdom

If only in the land of Sam Houston

if only in the land of the Alamo

if only in Wacoland USA

if only in Reno

if only on CNN CBS NBC

one had comprehended

one single syllable

of the Gautama Buddha

of the young Siddhartha

one single whisper of

Gandhi's spinning wheel

one lost syllable

of Martin Luther King

or of the Early Christians

or of Mother Teresa

or Thoreau or Whitman or Allen Ginsberg

or of the millions in America tuned to them

If the inner ears of the inner sanctums

had only been half open

to any vibrations except

those of the national security state

and had only been attuned

to the sound of one hand clapping

and not one hand punching

Then that sick cult and its children

might still be breathing

the free American air

of the First Amendment

@) 1993, Lawrence Ferlinghetti reprinted with permission from These Are My Rivers: New & Selected Poems 1955-1993, A New Directions Publication