Time of Useful Consciousness, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, New Directions, 96pp, £14.50 (hardback)

Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poetry has outsold his contemporaries. And he, at ninety-three, has outlived everyone. He has written so memorably of his hopes for the future. His radical idealism is in no way diminished but reignited by his outrage at the way things are going. That vision of a better world does not preclude a celebration of the past. Ferlinghetti writes in the American grain of the patriotic dissenter for whom the frontier is not to be conquered but to be revered. He writes in the spirit of Whitman and Melville and Twain and, of course, his friends the Beats, although his voice is his own. He writes of his mentors:

But all of them, singing or silent, reading between the lines
reading between the lives of America

Opening   

 the   

 book   

 at   

 random   

 (always   

 a   

 useful   

 first   

 step),   

 I   

 read   

 the   

 poet   

 quoting a poem of his from way back, a poem I remember well:

Johnny Nolan has a patch on his ass.
Kids chase him through screen door summers.

In a few well-chosen words poverty in the midst of plenty, that scourge of America’s dream of good living, is brought to life, a life that we can see as we read of it . . . Johnny Nolan, a latter-day Huck Finn, runs through the twentieth-century and beyond. It may be the quintessential Ferlinghetti poem, the one to begin with, the poem that gives access to the poet’s sense of direction.

And where, for Ferlinghetti, are things going? Westward of course. In 1900 the   

frontier   

was   

closed,   

but   

later   

the   

dust   

bowl   

Okies   

made   

for   

the   

coast.   

 Then there was the post-war migration. Ferlinghetti made San Francisco his   

home.   

At   

first   

it   

was   

a   

university   

job,   

then   

a   

drift   

into   

books   

to   

be   

sold,   

 published and written. The writing and the painting (an example of the poet’s art adorns the cover) helped create the aura of City Lights as a centre of the spirit of San Francisco, that great experiment in discovering what is worth discovering.

For   

a   

poet   

the   

essence   

of   

the   

discovery   

is   

poetry,   

the   

finest   

words   

spoken.   

 Poetry as Insurgent Art (2007) was Ferlinghetti’s most recent work, a fierce   

 polemic   

 for   

 poetry   

 as   

 a   

 form   

 distinct   

 from   

 prose   

 by   

 its   

 intensity   

 both of technique and purpose. Between the rhythm and the image is the sequestered spirit that breathes life and meaning into the arrangement of words: ‘Poetry is news from the growing edge on the far frontiers of   

consciousness.’   

Or,   

as   

he   

says   

in   

this   

new   

book,   

‘It   

is   

the   

dawn   

after   

 dreaming.’ Between the lives of America is the distance between declaring the war and striving for peace.

The incandescent energy of this sonorous protest may inspire its readers to acts of outrageous creativity. Allen Ginsberg once observed that originally to protest was to testify in favour, not against. Language may adapt to circumstance, but the genesis of protest’s positive meaning must be kept in mind. A poet is a maker, someone who does something useful. Time of useful consciousness, according to the author, is an aeronautical term to denote the brief period when a pilot’s oxygen fails and his subsequent collapse. We have only a limited time to put things right.

The sense of an ending has to be taken seriously. The human species is likely   

 to   

 survive.   

 Our   

 capacity   

 to   

 adapt,   

 even   

 to   

 thrive,   

 despite   

 terrible   

 adversity is awesome and, some would say, God-given. But a failure to accept certain truths about our situation does us no credit. This is Ferlinghetti’s case rolled out in what may be termed a benign fury that encompasses a treasury of feelings for good or ill about his native land. Flying over the Mid-West he notes how the tracks of the pioneers’ wagons are visible still. And he records his shame at the treatment of the tribes who welcomed and aided the white settlers. He remembers the Depression, the wars, and the great sweeps of intolerance that belied the democratic vision of America.

The techniques employed vary in tempo and timbre. In this long work there are necessary and welcome changes of mood. There are scherzo passages, then chants and invocations, followed by lyrical passages and quiet   

 moments   

 of   

 reflection   

 in   

 exquisite   

 prose.   

 The   

 purpose   

 behind   

 the   

 words,   

the   

spirit   

of   

the   

book,   

unifies   

the   

parts   

into   

an   

accomplished   

whole.   

 There is, mercifully, not a hint of nostalgia. The immediacy with which Ferlinghetti describes the past is so vibrant. It is the past relived, and not so much   

remembered   

as   

recreated.   

Experience   

and   

observations   

are   

filtered   

 into metaphor. Striking phrases are woven into a pattern of meanings that demand our attention. They charm or cajole or enchant, according to the poet’s need and the moment’s urgency.

Accomplished as this work it is not written in a late style. It is not so much a summing up as a wake-up call. If the energy alarms us at times that is the poet’s intention. If Johnny Nolan does not know he is being written about that is an indictment of a culture that has made art too precious. Reaching out is never easy, but Ferlinghetti is determined. The million copies and more sold of A Coney Island of the Mind testify in part to the achievement of his goals.

The other testimony is the work itself:

Trains in the book of night! across the great divides
across the inter-mountain country over the purple plains

over the thirsty deltas
winding down at last
to the glowing Golden Gate . . .

San Francisco is, of course, Ferlinghetti’s chosen territory, the distant place he has made home. What appealed, he writes, is the difference. It is not so much a city as an island, a great experiment in living, in exploring the ways communities and individuals can negotiate their diverse and energising needs and wishes:

San Francisco! The radiant city,
with an island climate and an island consciousness . . . a kind of offshore colony
settled by adventurers prospectors drifters