Ferlinghetti

J J R (jrovira@juno.com)
Tue, 10 Nov 1998 19:17:14 -0500 (EST)

Well, I had the privilege of hearing him speak at Rollins College in
Winter Park, FL last night.  Even got to shake his hand :)  He was in
Orlando to do a media thing about Kerouac's house over here, and read a
couple poems he'd written about Kerouac along with some of his other
work.  He said Kerouac was the most miserable when he was the most
successful, so he said the house we dedicated over here was a place
Kerouac was miserable in--he wrote Dharma Bums there.  

Ferlinghetti was an absolute riot.  I just didn't expect to laugh as much
as I did during the reading.  I had only read Pictures of the Gone World
and caught some of the humor, but hearing him read it made the poems
sound like a string of one-liners--like a Woody Allen short story or
something--especially when you take his NY Jewish accent into account.

He said Beat poetry was primarily performance poetry and told a story
about Ginsberg stripping during a reading in LA, I think, in the 1950s. 
He called himself the "straight brother" of the beat movement, and told a
story about one of his publishers having to testify that before a
subcommittee that he (LF) was not a communist.

The auditorium was, well, BEYOND standing room only.  The aisles were
filled up with people from the back all the way down to the stage.  LF
asked people crowded around the front door to come in and sit on the
stage with him.  

At the same time, some people told me that personally--person to person,
that is--he came across pretty cold.  I left the reception afterwards
just as he was arriving so I wasn't able to find out for myself.

But he sure was a riot behind the podium :)

Jim       

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