A Fling with Ferlinghetti

Abstract

T has rarely been easy to plan a lively and stimulating approach to the teaching of poetry. It has caused many English teachers extra hours of planning, originating creative approaches, and perhaps hoping that their students will like the unit. Often overlooked in presenting American poetry to high school students is the contemporary verse which has appeared in recent years, what some might even call beatnik poetry. Poetry should be an experience for students, not a study, much less a boring one. Contemporary poetry, I believe, can give students an experience that no other verse can. It can spark life into a seemingly dead thing, and one of the most stirring American poets of recent years is Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I have used Ferlinghetti's A Coney Island of the Mind' for the past two years in junior English classes with all boys. The reactions have varied from excited enthusiasm to strong protest. But the important thing is that there have been reactions. Though many teachers, perhaps, would find Ferlinghetti's poems offensive and even crude, I am convinced that they speak to the students as no other poems that I have seen do. Today's teen-agers can easily associate with Ferlinghetti's style. Yet, this author has a definite discipline of form. But he takes basic American speech and makes it sing in a way that no other American poet that I know of has done. His poems reflect simplicity amid complexity. The force that students find dominant