Host(s): Allen DeLoach and A. Poulin, Jr.
Tape order number: VF-19-1
Visit Date: March 13, 1973
Length: 1 hour, 2 minutes
Brief Summary: Ferlinghetti demonstrates the uses of poetry as performance, and talks about the oral and heroic tradition of poetry in Russia as one of his models for what poetry can be. He says that poets are supposed to show their audiences what people wouldn't otherwise see, but that most contemporary poets in the U.S. have bland visions of the world. Ferlinghetti talks at length about Pound's influence on the freeing of poetic forms; he also praises Pound's speaking against the U.S. government, but condemns Pound's anti-Semitism.
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There's too much dead language in poetry these days; it's just morbid sometimes...
-- Lawrence Ferlenghetti
