On Urgency, Culture Jamming, and the Words of Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Rion Levy

Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti was a culture jammer who documented his trajectory along the Will to Playful Creation and urged his readers to do the same. Although a member of the Beat Movement, the methods with which he confronted the world did not align closely with some of the more illicit, and dangerous tactics used by his compatriots. He illustrates that everyone has their own, unique ways to deconstruct the world and culture jam and therefore must rely upon one’s own critical responses to, and interpretations of the world. Culture jamming is a modern word for an ancient process. Although today it often manifests as pushback against advertiser and corporate culture, the term can broadly apply to any non-compliant response to “the anti-pleasure ethos of mainstream capitalist society” (Klein, “Culture Jamming,” 283). In other words, to culture jam is to apply the act of détournment, the subversion and perversion of meaning, in the attempt to uncover and present a true or hidden message (Lasn 417). It is a strong rejection of the normal which frequently leads culture jammers to attract attention as they turn themselves into a spectacle. This attention is not necessarily drawn from a desire for recognition, rather, when someone acts as a dériviste and follows along the Will to Playful Creation, the free exploration of the world in the pursuit of that which one loves (242), they act in such stark defiance of the status-quo, that they are magnets for eyes. These individuals “approach life full-on, without undue fear or crippling self-censorship, pursuing joy and novelty as if tomorrow you’ll be in the ground” (424). It is their open sense of the world that offers so much hope in the face of the disparaging uncertainty of the modern-day. A close reading of Ferlinghetti’s poetry demonstrates that it is possible to feel deeply for something and to use that passion to shape it into our reality.

After he served in the Second World War and received his Ph.D. from l’Université de Paris, Ferlinghetti settled in San Francisco and opened City Lights Bookstore (Charters “Beat Down”). In the 1950s, literature was rarely sold in paperback, as the culture deemed that high literature was only worthy when bound in hardcover (Charters, Constantly Risking Absurdity, 230). In his first public act of defiance, he decided his store would only sell paperback books. Two years later, the bookstore expanded, adding a publishing house where he published the first poetry anthology in The Pocket Poets Series (Charters 230). Pictures of the Gone World is Ferlinghetti’s heads-up to the world where he debuts his unique and noncompliant perspectives. In the 60th Anniversary Edition, he acknowledges that “Looking back on these poems sixty years later … there is a freshness of perception that only young eyes have, in the dandelion bloom of youth” (Ferlinghetti, “Gone World,” i). He exclaims that

the world is a beautiful place

to be born into

if you don’t much mind

a few dead minds

………………………

or such other impropriates

as our Name Brand society

is prey to (“Gone World,” “#25,” lines 20-30),

and although he is critical in this anthology, he developed his famously strong vocal tone after forced to answer for it.

The next year, Ferlinghetti was charged with obscenity for the publication of Number Four in the series, Allen Ginsberg’s classic, Howl and Other Poems (Charters, Constantly Risking Absurdity, 231). He ultimately won the case and claimed a major victory for the literary and vocal freedoms of the new America that sprung from the post-war generation. An advertisement in Circle Magazine describes the general problem that led to the trial in the first place,

There is a struggle going on for the minds of the American people. Every form of expression is subject to the attack of reaction. This attack comes in the shape of silence, persecution, and censorship: three names for fear. In the face of this fear, the writer can speak (Constantly Risking Absurdity 228).

The voices of the Beat Generation did go on to write, backed predominately by City Lights which continues to serve this community of nonconformists today. Ferlinghetti describes the hub as “generally in an anarchistic, civil libertarian, antiauthoritarian tradition … with none [of its published books] federally financed by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. (Its editors, in the Anarchist/Surrealist tradition, like it that way)” (Constantly Risking Absurdity 230). The bookstore is an act of blunt culture jamming as it refuses to follow traditions other bookstores do: it publishes works fuelled by profound feelings that transcends societal laws of decency, only from the support of like-minded authors and readers.

Toward the end of the decade, Ferlinghetti published the poetry anthology A Coney Island of the Mind, a work that continues to see phenomenal success with over one million copies in print (“Lawrence Ferlinghetti”). The anthology opens with the poem that reads

We are the same people

only further from home

on freeways fifty lanes wide

on a concrete continent

spaced with bland billboards

illustrating imbecile illusions of happiness (Ferlinghetti, “Coney Island,” “#1,” lines 26-31).

Ferlinghetti senses an endless dread in Postmodern America. Nevertheless, in the bleak moment, he also offers his discovery as to the role of the poet in that, “Constantly risking absurdity … the poet like an acrobat / climbs on rime / to a highwire of his own making” (“#15,” lines 1, 6-8) and that the “poet’s eye obscenely seeing / sees the surface of the round world … and its surrealist landscape” (“#3,” lines 1-2, 12). Ferlinghetti presents that the poet is an outsider who routinely sees an alternative, distant, and somewhat timeless view of life who, through this altered perception, can provide unique insight. His proposal aligns well with Northrop Frye’s philosophy when he writes that “literature not only leads us toward the regaining of identity, but it also separates this state from its opposite, the world we don’t like and want to get away from ” (Frye, The Educated Imagination, 31). In other words, the production of poetry, at least as far as Ferlinghetti is concerned, is a pure act of détournment. How the poet demonstrates this act is through the profound risk that is a pure act of détournment. How the poet demonstrates this act is through the profound risk that accompanies expression, but without explorations of what could be, there is no to subvert and reverse what is. Poetry is a delicate act that must be blunt but careful to insight a timely awareness in its readers of the ills of the present.

In Poetry as Insurgent Art, Ferlinghetti continues to think about what poetry is, what its use is in our society, how we watch as society crumbles, and how we individuals can make an impact. He argues that “Poetry holds death at bay” (Ferlinghetti, “Insurgent Art,” “What is Poetry?,” line 34) and that “Poetry in handcuffs handcuffs the human race. / Poetry can still save the world by transforming consciousness” (“Insurgent Art,” “What is Poetry?,” lines 158-159), but also that “Civilization self-destructs” (“Insurgent Art,” “Poetry as Insurgent Art,” line 4). Today the world faces a grand number of existential threats, environmental, political, economic, and social. Nevertheless, society is worth fighting for even if hopeless; and it is apparent through his writing that the beautiful words the poet presents are one of the reasons why. He offers some hope with the plead for us to diverge from societal expectations. He decrees,

Poets, descend

to the

street of the world once more

And open your minds & eyes

with the old visual delight,

Clear your throat and speak up,

Poetry is dead, long live poetry

with terrible eyes and buffalo strength.

Don’t wait for the Revolution or it’ll happen without you (“Insurgent Art,” “Populist Mani festo #1 (1976),” lines 90-98)

and later, he urges that “The subjective must take back the world / from the objective gorillas & guerillas of the world / We must rejoin somehow” (“Insurgent Art,” “Populist Manifesto #2 (1978),” lines 29-31). His cry is desperate yet cautiously optimistic as he knows there are others out there like him who want to defy the status-quo for the sake of tomorrow. In this work, Ferlinghetti exemplifies Debord’s vision of culture jamming (Lasn 415-417) as though he writes an accompanying textbook. Everyone is a creator in their own life, and if an individual chooses to seize back their experience of the world, and refrain from acting complicitly, then they become active participants. He teaches that it is better to be on the side of the vocal, those aware of their surroundings who have considered it critically than to fall into ever-evolving tides that they would therefore be unable to influence.

According to Ferlinghetti, we ought to “Challenge capitalism masquerading as democracy. / Challenge all political creeds, including radical populism and hooligan socialism” (“Insurgent Art,” “Poetry as Insurgent Art,” lines 116-117) and must “Speak up. Act out. Silence is complicity. … Wake up, the world’s on fire!” (“Insurgent Art,” “Poetry as Insurgent Art,” lines 184, 187). He warns of the urgency that lies behind our failed attempts for a reasonable society while he also acknowledges that we must consider any alternative solution critically before we assume that it will answer every problem. To jump to a binary opposite of a failed political system would not work. Instead, society must look to Derrida and Freeze the Play of Opposites (Urbancic) that exists between creeds to build a new, holistic world that works. To Ferlinghetti, capitalism and democracy are incompatible, but he does not try to argue that his favoured, progressive ideologies are what society should immediately shift to. He simply argues that it is time to consider the world as it is, how it could be if we were to demarket and uncool capitalism, which revokes its power (Lasn 421-428), how individuals would personally fit within this uncooled world, and how society should reconstruct the social order. Although he invites his readers to his leftist perspective, he ultimately prompts them to make up their own minds so long as they no longer numb themseleves to today’s fractured normal.

Most recently, Ferlinghetti’s 2019 autobiographic memoir Little Boy serves as a resolution to his restless woes as it is his final work before his passing. Although he still wishes for his readers to consider “capitalism the very enemy of democracy” (Ferlinghetti, Little Boy, 56) and asks “why be normal when you can be happy?” (91), his optimism that radiates through his manifesto that indicates poets will save the world withers slightly here. He warns that “the past is receding faster and faster” (133) as “the world is coming to an end for the millionth time but this time it’s for real” (161). Most of Ferlinghetti’s political commentary focuses on the situation within the United States, but the world is interconnected; the socio-political climates of Canada’s neighbour to the South reflect and impact elements of our own. He proclaims that “a civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a moribund civilization a civilization that lives by cunning and fraud is a gone civilization” (32). Yet, despite his loss of hope, Ferlinghetti still asks his readers to try. Unlike in Poetry as Insurgent Art, Ferlinghetti uses Little Boy to push across his political beliefs and does not censor his support of Kropotkin’s Anarchism. At the conclusion of the novel, he writes “Be lazy Go crazy Join the movement Don’t take medicine Eat the garden Ignore government Disband the military Join the pacifist Discover anarchism Resist and Disobey!” (170). This passage is one of his ultimate displays of the Will to Playful Creation. Here, he is blunt in his expression of his sentiments and he truly does not stifle his beliefs in the subtle ways he has in his earlier works. He is climatically authentic and his voice crescendos into a final roar. He rejects sympathy and he merely wants everyone to get up and make their own meanings, lives, and to fight for the world with the novelty that comes with individuality. He does not tell everyone to disobey authority unreasonably, but he urges everyone to refuse to submit as Emulators. We need to stop our perpetual existence of survival and to live to thrive.

A final idea from his novel that argues a glimmer of optimism, is one that pleads against the fall into Boredom. He assures that, if one follows the path of creative resistance, they will be okay when he pronounces that “we are the great dreamers” (Little Boy 107). When someone acts as an Emulator (Lasn 416), those who seek out material goods and experiences as forms of escapism from monotony, rather than those who develop lives they are comfortable in during the everyday, they are likely to discover Boredom (Lasn 418), one of the Big Enemies. Lasn argues that Boredom signifies a silenced sense of wonder as a result of the capitalism’s overwhelming expectations; Emulators always look forward, rather than experience the present (418). Ferlinghetti urges that so long as individuals continue to engage with their potential to dream, the world’s novelty and their appreciation of it will survive.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti tracked his journey through life with his poetry, prose, and movement that used his independent bookstore in an unsuspecting enclave of San Francisco as its headquarters. Ferlinghetti recently passed away on the 22nd of February 2021 (City Lights Booksellers & Publishers). During his life, he was consistent in his belief that poets are visionaries and therefore experience “the further reality” (Ferlinghetti, “Insurgent Art,” line 76) as “life goes on, and us with it” (Ferlinghetti, Little Boy, 178). His legacy will remind generations to come of the urgency of the present moment. The ultimate rejection of the essence of humanity is to submit to Boredom, and live life mindlessly. If we seek out the Will to Playful Creation and play in the comfort that we are alive, conscious, and real, as he impels us to live a life that is worthwhile, then that will make all the difference the poet could dream of.

Works Cited

Charters, Ann. “‘Constantly Risking Absurdity,’ Some San Francisco Renaissance Poets.” The Portable Beat Reader, edited by Ann Charters, New York, Penguin Books, 1927, pp. 227–330.

Charters, Ann. “Lawrence Ferlinghetti.” Beat Down to Your Soul, edited by Ann Charters, New York, Penguin Books, 2001, p. 168.

City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. Passing of Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Facebook, 23 February 2021, 2:02 p.m., https://www.facebook.com/CityLightsBooks/posts/10159089536496878. Accessed 23 February 2021.

Ferlinghetti, Lawrence. A Coney Island of the Mind. New York, New Directions Books, 1958.

Ferlinghetti, Lawrence. Little Boy. New York, New York, Doubleday, 2019.

Ferlinghetti, Lawrence. Pictures of the Gone World, 60th Anniversary Edition. San Francisco, City Lights Bookstore, 2015.

Ferlinghetti, Lawrence. Poetry as Insurgent Art. New York, New Directions Books, 2007.

Frye, Northrop. The Educated Imagination. Toronto, House of Anansi Press, 1991.

Klein, N. “Culture Jamming.” Culture Jamming. Toronto, Vintage Canada, 2000.

Lasn, Kalle. “Culture Jamming.” The Consumer Society Reader, edited by J.B. Schor and D. B. Holt, New York, NewPress, 2000, pp. 414–432.

“Lawrence Ferlinghetti.” Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/lawrence-ferlinghetti. Accessed 2 November 2020.

Urbancic, Anne. “Introduction – What’s the Big Idea?” University of Toronto, Toronto. 14 Sept. 2020. Lecture.