He bluntly tells us that poets and other artists are superior people in some important way, and he himself is in that elite number. He seems to hold that the impressionist mode of expression, be it in paint or words, captures a world every bit as real as the external world itself.įerlinghetti denounces the mass society, the bomb, the anti-intellectualism of American culture. He also has references to many significant literary figures from the Greeks to Kafka and many mainline poets of the past. Many of the poems refer to paintings by various impressionist and expressionist painters – Bosch, Picasso, Chagall, the lesser known American painter Morris Graves and others. In the main first set we get Ferlinghetti the deeply disenchanted, angry, even bitter man screaming out at the absurdities of American culture. Finally there is a set of 13 poems reprised from his first book of poetry of 1955, PICURES OF THE GONE WORLD. These were meant to be read aloud and accompanied by live jazz. Second come 7 poems under the collected title of Oral Messages. The first is a set of 29 poems collected under the same title as the book itself.
The book is made up of three sets of poems. Since them I have often been back to this slim volume to read this or that favorite poem in the book, but I had not re-read the whole in 46 years. On a sunny crisp cold November day I curled up with a pot of hot tea and decided to go back and re-read A CONEY ISLAND OF THE MIND, a book of poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti which had deeply influenced me back in 1959 when I read it for the first time. Book review - Lawrence Ferlinghetti A CONEY ISLAND OF THE MIND Beat Beatnik Poetry A CONEY ISLAND OF THE MIND Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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