LAWRENCE FERLINGHETT I ~

I Am Waiting

BY LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI

I am waiting for my case to come up   

and I am waiting

for a rebirth of wonder

and I am waiting for someone

to really discover America

and wail

and I am waiting   

for the discovery

of a new symbolic western frontier   

and I am waiting   

for the American Eagle

to really spread its wings

and straighten up and fly right

and I am waiting

for the Age of Anxiety

to drop dead

and I am waiting

for the war to be fought

which will make the world safe

for anarchy

and I am waiting

for the final withering away

of all governments

and I am perpetually awaiting

a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Second Coming   

and I am waiting

for a religious revival

to sweep thru the state of Arizona   

and I am waiting

for the Grapes of Wrath to be stored   

and I am waiting

for them to prove

that God is really American

and I am waiting

to see God on television

piped onto church altars

if only they can find   

the right channel   

to tune in on

and I am waiting

for the Last Supper to be served again

with a strange new appetizer

and I am perpetually awaiting

a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for my number to be called

and I am waiting

for the Salvation Army to take over

and I am waiting

for the meek to be blessed

and inherit the earth   

without taxes

and I am waiting

for forests and animals

to reclaim the earth as theirs

and I am waiting

for a way to be devised

to destroy all nationalisms

without killing anybody

and I am waiting

for linnets and planets to fall like rain

and I am waiting for lovers and weepers

to lie down together again

in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed   

and I am anxiously waiting

for the secret of eternal life to be discovered   

by an obscure general practitioner

and I am waiting

for the storms of life

to be over

and I am waiting

to set sail for happiness

and I am waiting

for a reconstructed Mayflower

to reach America

with its picture story and tv rights

sold in advance to the natives

and I am waiting

for the lost music to sound again

in the Lost Continent

in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the day

that maketh all things clear

and I am awaiting retribution

for what America did   

to Tom Sawyer   

and I am waiting

for Alice in Wonderland

to retransmit to me

her total dream of innocence

and I am waiting

for Childe Roland to come

to the final darkest tower

and I am waiting   

for Aphrodite

to grow live arms

at a final disarmament conference

in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting

to get some intimations

of immortality

by recollecting my early childhood

and I am waiting

for the green mornings to come again   

youth’s dumb green fields come back again

and I am waiting

for some strains of unpremeditated art

to shake my typewriter

and I am waiting to write

the great indelible poem

and I am waiting

for the last long careless rapture

and I am perpetually waiting

for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn   

to catch each other up at last

and embrace

and I am awaiting   

perpetually and forever

a renaissance of wonder

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “I Am Waiting” from A Coney Island of the Mind. Copyright © 1958

JACK KEROUAC TAKES US TO POOH BEAR ~

Steve Allen 

1959

IRON CURTAIN JOURNALS ~

You may think you've had enough Ginsberg — not quite.

This is AG at his height and only rising.

He's spunky, daring and traveling solo

meeting poets and flavors along the way.

He will be crowned by students ceremoniously

the "King of May" in the Czech Republic and

then unceremoniously be booted out of the

country by the government who already

warned him to keep a low profile.

Impossible.

[ BA ]

University of Minnesota Press 2018

edited by Michael Schumacher

BOP APOCALYPSE ~

R E V I E W

Da Capo 2016

In memory of Natasha Richardson & Ronald Tavel

NEW BOOK

THE BEATS, a graphic history (Hill and Wang) edited by Paul Buhle Text by Harvey Pekar, Nancy J. Peters, Penelope Rosemont, Joyce Brabner, Trina Robbins, Tuli Kupferberg Art by Ed Piskor, Jay Kinney, Nick Thorkelson, Summer McClinton, Peter Kuper, Mary Fleener, Jerome Neukirch, Anne Timmons, Gary Dumm, Lance Tooks, Jeffrey Lewis

Since the Big Top is burning down, what better time to bring back the mad and beautiful voices in the wind that predicted much of the firestorm? A history of the Beats and later edges bohemia Post-WW2 /1950s highlighted with biographical portraits of three standup guys: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S.Burroughs. Except for Neal Cassady the depictions aren't that well drawn (John Clellon Holmes with beret and goatee?) but the heart is right. The drawings pick up wonderfully in the spirit for Kenneth Patchen, Gary Snyder and the "Beat Chicks". We're missing a likewise two-page spread for Bob Kaufman, Jack Micheline and Lew Welch, but at least they nabbed Philip Whalen, Lamantia and Tuli Kupferberg! If it takes a comic book for a new audience to discover On the Road, Howl and Naked Lunch then so be it. As Pekar says, gazing out at us from a frame, "We all tried to imitate it."


FILM

IN BRUGES (D: Martin McDonagh)



Making a way — hands down, there is no film like Sexy Beast. None before and none perhaps ever, until In Bruges came around. I won't go into it all now, though I'm passionate about the film. It's an Irish gamer and has a winning side (one of a handful of Irish films that nails-it) and cinematically it is a thrill ride of everything technically astute while the entire film is running backwards, forwards, sideways at once. Perhaps? Who cares, it's a wonder, an absolute wonder toy of movie making. The actors, the main three, are supreme. As with Psycho, no one should give away the gist of a film — In Bruges is much the same. It was made to be opened up, meaning you opened up, your whole being while watching. There is a third film, in a short list of: never-been-made-before, and that would be Withnail and I. Blow my mind all three films hail from the same British Isles, a fighting term, I know, but I'm using it anyway just to point to a location. Most often these films are detested at first run. By the second and third viewing you're defending them with every inch of your life.