Academy of American Poets
View Cart | Log In 
Subscribe | More Info 
Find a Poet or Poem
Advanced Search >
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Poet and translator, Lawrence Ferlinghetti is the author of more than thirty books of poetry and the founder of City Lights Books Shop in San Francisco...
More >
FURTHER READING
Related Poems
Cameo One
by Michael McClure
Majakovskiiiiiiij
by Adriano Spatola
Poems about the End of the World
A Song On the End of the World
by Czeslaw Milosz
Apocalypse
by Gerald Stern
Apocalypse Soliloquy
by Scott Hightower
Continuity
by A. R. Ammons
in the ruins
by Mark Conway
The Truth About the Present
by John Lane
The Very Nervous Family
by Sabrina Orah Mark
Poems about Poetry
Epistles, Book II, Ars Poetica
by Horace
A Book Of Music
by Jack Spicer
A True Poem
by Lloyd Schwartz
Adam's Curse
by W. B. Yeats, read by James Wright
Always on the Train
by Ruth Stone
And It Came to Pass
by C. D. Wright
Ars Poetica
by Archibald MacLeish
Ars Poetica
by Eleanor Wilner
Ars Poetica (cocoons)
by Dana Levin
Art Class
by James Galvin
Arthur's Anthology of English Poetry
by Laurence Lerner
Because You Asked about the Line Between Prose and Poetry
by Howard Nemerov
Blue or Green
by James Galvin
Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks
by Jane Kenyon
Broadway
by Mark Doty
Diving into the Wreck
by Adrienne Rich, read by Anne Waldman
Eating Poetry
by Mark Strand
Endnote
by Hayden Carruth
Envoi
by William Meredith
Ground Swell
by Mark Jarman
How to Read a Poem: Beginner's Manual
by Pamela Spiro Wagner
If It All Went Up in Smoke
by George Oppen
Instructions to Be Left Behind
by Marvin Bell
Introduction to Poetry
by Billy Collins
Languages
by Carl Sandburg
O Black and Unknown Bards
by James Weldon Johnson
On the Subject of Poetry
by W. S. Merwin
Poet's Work
by Lorine Niedecker
Poetry
by Marianne Moore
Poetry Is a Destructive Force
by Wallace Stevens
Prefix: Finding the measure
by Robert Kelly
Some Part of the Lyric
by Gregory Orr
Speech Alone
by Jean Follain
Take the I Out
by Sharon Olds
Teaching the Ape to Write Poems
by James Tate
The Allure of Forms
by Coral Bracho
The Art of Poetry [excerpt]
by Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux
The Bargain
by Cyrus Cassells
The Bear
by Galway Kinnell
The Composition of the Text
by Adriano Spatola
The Difference between a Child and a Poem
by Michael Blumenthal
The Indications [excerpt]
by Walt Whitman
The Poem as Mask
by Muriel Rukeyser
The Poems I Have Not Written
by John Brehm
The Snow and the Plum — II
by Lu Mei-P'o
The Uses of Poetry
by William Carlos Williams
This Bridge, Like Poetry, is Vertigo
by Marie Ponsot
What He Thought
by Heather McHugh
Why I Am Not a Painter
by Frank O'Hara
Workshop
by Billy Collins
Adopt a Poet | Add to Notebook | E-mail to Friend | Print
Poetry as Insurgent Art [I am signaling you through the flames]  
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I am signaling you through the flames.

The North Pole is not where it used to be.

Manifest Destiny is no longer manifest.

Civilization self-destructs.

Nemesis is knocking at the door.

What are poets for, in such an age?
What is the use of poetry?

The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it.

If you would be a poet, create works capable of answering the challenge of apocalyptic times, even if this meaning sounds apocalyptic.

You are Whitman, you are Poe, you are Mark Twain, you are Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay, you are Neruda and Mayakovsky and Pasolini, you are an American or a non-American, you can conquer the conquerors with words....




Share Digg StumbleUpon Facebook E-mail to Friend



From Poetry as Insurgent Art by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Copyright © 2007 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Used by permission of New Directions. All rights reserved.
Larger TypeLarger Type | Home | Help | Contact Us | Privacy Policy Copyright © 1997 - 2012 by Academy of American Poets.