The Secret Meaning of Things - Poetry (Paperback)

Six recent poems by the California poet of which two are occasional and all - with their short sharp lines, hortatory repetitions and broad rhymes - seem designed for reading aloud to audiences. The First, "Assassination Raga," is a declamatory litany for Robert Kennedy. "Bickford's Buddha" occasions random observations about a day spent at Harvard and (evidently) the transience of human life. Without pausing he asks again in "All Too Clearly" "What is the secret meaning/ of this poem adrift in air?" The secret is short-circuited human contacts and the poet's mystic identification with his fellow man, unreciprocated. LSD is extolled in "Samsara," and "After the Cries of Birds" envisions an apocalyptic future. Finally "Moscow in the Wilderness, Segovia in the Snow" summons up a mythic beast and questions what is important in life. This is answered by an ancient armadillo which "unglues its great gut mouth and utters/ ecstatic static." The latter phrase might usefully describe large sections of these poems. (Kirkus Reviews)

The Secret Meaning of Things has all the elements of his earlier poetry: lyrical intensity, wit, social concern, satirical bite, and above all a classical claritas. But it goes much further: there is a deepening of vision and a darker understanding of "our clay condition." The six long poems in The Secret Meaning of Things show a progressive continuity and clarity of perception that apprehends both the hard reality and luminous irreality in everyday phenomena. In "Assassination Raga"--on the death of Robert Kennedy--the glass through which the poet sees darkly is the television screen; the poem was first read on the night of RFK's funeral at a mass memorial in San Francisco. "Bickford's Buddha" is a meditation on "Observation Fever" in Harvard Square, while "All Too Clearly" finds a "touch of old surrealism/at a stoplight in La Jolla." "Through the Looking Glass" begins with an actual flight aboard a commercial airliner and moves through a psychedelic vision to a final flash of the Dance of Shiva, which in turn opens out into the worldview of "After the Cries of Birds." "Moscow in the Wilderness, Segovia in the Snow" comes out of Ferlinghetti's travels to Moscow and across the steppes in the winter of 1967.

General

Imprint:	New Directions Publishing Corporation
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	February 1968
First published:	1969
Authors:	Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Dimensions:	206 x 135 x 8mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	60
ISBN-13:	978-0-8112-0045-5
Categories:	Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary studies > From 1900 Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Poetry & poets > General Books > Language & Literature > Literature: texts > Poetry texts & anthologies > General
LSN:	0-8112-0045-0
Barcode:	9780811200455

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