"Secretly liberate any being you see in a cage."
artistic freedom and detaching from ego
Farmhouse in Provence (1888) by Vincent Van Gogh. Original from The National Gallery of Art.
[Excerpts from] Challenges to Young Poets
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Invent a new language anyone can understand.
Climb the Statue of Liberty.
Reach for the unattainable.
Kiss the mirror and write what you see and hear.
Dance with wolves and count the stars,
including the unseen.
Be naïve, innocent, non-cynical, as if you had
just landed on earth (as
indeed you have, as indeed we all have), astonished by what you
have fallen upon.
Write living newspapers. Be a reporter from
outer space, filing dispatches to some
supreme managing editor who believes in full
disclosure and has a low tolerance level for
hot air.
Write an endless poem about your life on
earth or elsewhere.
Read the between the lines of human discourse.
Avoid the provincial, go for the universal.
Think subjectively, write objectively.
Think long thoughts in short sentences.
Don’t attend poetry workshops, but if you do,
don’t go to learn “how to” but to learn
“what” (What’s important to write about).
…
Resist much, obey less.
Secretly liberate any being you see in a cage.
Write short poems in the voice of birds.
Make your lyrics truly lyrics.
Birdsong is not made by machines.
Give your poems wings to
fly to the treetops.
…
Remember everything, forget nothing.
Work on a frontier, if you can find one.
Go to sea, or work near water, and paddle
your own boat.
Associate with thinking poets. They’re hard
to find.
…
Come out of your closet. It’s dark in there.
Raise the blinds, throw open your shuttered
windows, raise the roof, unscrew the locks
from the doors, but don’t throw away the
screws.
Be committed to something outside yourself.
be militant about it. Or ecstatic.
To be a poet at sixteen is to be sixteen, to be
at poet at 40 is to be a poet. Be both.
Wake up and pee, the world’s on fire.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, from the San Francisco Poet Laureate series published by City Lights Foundation
Creative Invitation
Fill in the blanks of these Mad Libs:
Wake up and _______, the world’s ___________.
Work on a ________, if you can ____________.
Remember _________, forget ___________.
Write them down and give them to someone you don’t know.
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some not-great poetry inspired by this one.... detaching from ego ; )
1
Do not write in bed. Well okay, you can write in bed but only if an elderly dog has jumped up into the bed next to you, and you don’t want her to strain herself by jumping down again and following you in to the living room. She follows you everywhere.
2
If you do write in bed, take care not to fall asleep while you are writing. Stay awake. That is the most important rule of writing. And life.
3
If you fall asleep, at least notice you fell asleep. Allow a sneeze to wake you up. Allow a terrible life mistake to wake you up. Vow to not make that mistake again. Know that you will.
4
They will tell you to take time to stop and smell the roses. This is not wrong, but also feel the thorns. Feel the prick when you pick up a rose, fully expecting sensual pleasure, and then you feel pain. Feel it all.
5
Start every morning this way, with writing, with tending to the old dog, with feeling both the pleasure and pain of the rose. Try to stay awake. Forgive yourself when you fall asleep. Let the dreams carry you to the land of the dead where you’ll meet your loved ones again. Wake up and know they aren’t here. But yet they are.
Oh, these are powerful. I love the last line most...Wake up and pee, the world is on fire. thank you for sharing this, Ariel