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A review by ste3ve_b1rd
A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
4.0
I wasn't familiar with the work of Lawrence Ferlinghetti until I read this title -- The Beat writers whose work I know the best are: Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. Although, according to Wikipedia, Ferlinghetti did not consider himself to be a Beat poet -- The poems in this collection remind me of Kerouac's style (the poetic aspect of Kerouac's writing, that is). The poem, in this work, which blew my mind more than any other -- Was written when Ferlinghetti was circa 35-36 years old (Poem #2 on p. 78 of this edition, from "Pictures of the Gone World", 1955). It could be that Poem #2 came into being as a result of either intuition, instinct -- Or both (according to the "Encyclopedia of World Biography", Ferlinghetti's father, Carlo, died six months before L. Ferlinghetti's birth; L. Ferlinghetti's mother, Clemence, was then thrown into a downward spiral and eventually institutionalized). In any case, I was amazed by what I perceived to be Ferlinghetti's visceral understanding of mortality, in the way that he juxtaposed an image of the young, lighthearted and oblivious -- With that of the old and decrepit, in Poem #2. Despite my being a person who's not usually interested in poetry -- I was impressed with this collection. And so I'll end with the text of Poem #2 from p. 78 of this edition -- As it had such a profound effect on me (the text is left-justified below i.e. not formatted in the way that Ferlinghetti did in this book).
just as I used to say
love comes harder to the aged
because they've been running
on the same old rails too long
and then when the sly switch comes along
they miss the turn
and burn up the wrong rail while
the gay caboose goes flying
and the steam engine driver don't recognize
them new electric horns
and the aged run out on the rusty spur
which ends up in
the dead grass where
the rusty tin cans and bedsprings and old razor
blades and moldy mattresses
lie
and the rail breaks off dead
right there
though the ties go on a while
and the aged
say to themselves
well
this must be the place
we were supposed to lie down
and they do
while the bright saloon careens along away
on a high
hilltop
its windows full of bluesky and lovers
with flowers
their long hair streaming
and all of them laughing
and waving and
whispering to each other
and looking out and
wondering what that graveyard
where the rails end
is
just as I used to say
love comes harder to the aged
because they've been running
on the same old rails too long
and then when the sly switch comes along
they miss the turn
and burn up the wrong rail while
the gay caboose goes flying
and the steam engine driver don't recognize
them new electric horns
and the aged run out on the rusty spur
which ends up in
the dead grass where
the rusty tin cans and bedsprings and old razor
blades and moldy mattresses
lie
and the rail breaks off dead
right there
though the ties go on a while
and the aged
say to themselves
well
this must be the place
we were supposed to lie down
and they do
while the bright saloon careens along away
on a high
hilltop
its windows full of bluesky and lovers
with flowers
their long hair streaming
and all of them laughing
and waving and
whispering to each other
and looking out and
wondering what that graveyard
where the rails end
is