Note: By the time he died Monday at 101, Lawrence Ferlinghetti had been the voice of several generations, starting in the 1950s, when he almost accidentally co-founded San Francisco’s famed City Lights Bookstore, which became a home of the Beat movement. When he published “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg in 1956, he was arrested for publishing obscenity and became an outspoken critic of censorship. The charges were dismissed because the court identified “redeeming social significance” in the work, a distinction that endures as essential in free expression. RIP.
“Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose
sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully
as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by
torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but
its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow
their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.”
―Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021), beat poet and
bookstore owner, “Pity
the Nation,” 2007.
• Editorial Comment: Keep the faith.
• NYTimes obit: “Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Poet Who Nurtured the Beats, Dies at 101.”
• Bonus: Perhaps Ferlinghetti’s last published poem, “Trump’s Trojan Horse,” The Nation, 2017.
PeezPIX
Sadie Bigmouth
In February’s Senior News . . . All You Need Is Love.
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