On February 18, 2001, the Chronicle newspaper featured Lawrence Ferlingetti's advice to young poets when he appeared as San Francisco's "Poet Laureate" at the: City Wide School Poetry Festival, in his own words, (in "poet purple" followed by my humble comments in ordinary teal) as part of the awards ceremony, Ferlingetti offered the following wisdom to budding school poets:

Invent a new language anyone can understand.

Just write fifty poems a day and one of them might have a good line or two. Never give up. Keep writing every day like a cafe-slave for the rest of your long poor chapbook life. And steal from other poets too, like Ginsberg and Bowie.

Leonardo da Vinci said: "Make one thousand drawings and ONE of them MIGHT be good". Ditto.

Climb the Statue of Liberty.

What, and jump? So fine, climb down the Statue of Liberty. Then what? Take the elevator back up? I know, go shoplift a four hundred dollar Mont Blanc pen and write a poem about it. It's a joke ... don't steal.

Reach for the unattainable.

Why would anyone even try that? Look, this is the BS "they" always say after some clown jumps a pogo stick to the top of Everest or something. It's stupid. If something is unattainable, forget it. Reach for the ATTAINABLE and you will be amazed where it will take you --- to the truly "unattainable". The real question is why "wise elders" have been teaching this same advice for the past two thousand years. Could it be they are protecting job security through misdirection: THE OLD: Established Artist's Secret Snipe Hunt Sidestep.

Kiss the mirror and write what you see and hear.

This guy is a narcissistic Beatnik ... watch out for him. If he ever invites you to City Lights Bookstore and tells you take the stairs to the basement and whisper, "Larry, Larry" decline. Go to a movie instead. You can get ten good poems from one bad movie.

Dance with wolves.

Speaking of wolves: the Beat Poet Laureate of San Francisco "borrowing" from Kevin Costner?

Count the stars, including the unseen.

With a computer telescope I hope. Well, young poets like counting stars, that's true. One, two ... buckle my shoe, three, four ... shut the door ... five, six, pick up sticks, seven, eight, lay them straight ... nine, ten, a big fat hen ...

Be naive, innocent, uncynical, as if you had just landed on earth, as indeed you have, as indeed we all have, astonished by what you have fallen upon.

Like Larry's lap.

Write living newspapers.

What, I should be a tattoo artist? But, you said I could be a poet.

Be a reporter from outer space, filing dispatches to some supreme managing editor who believes in full disclosure and has a low tolerance for hot air.

And hope he never sees the advice you gave students at the City Wide School Poetry Festival.

Read between the lines of human discourse.

Read between the LIES. Hey, we're smart-apes, okay. Art-apes. A bunch of liars, especially poets. Don't mess with me. I know the Poet Brothers and they'll finish you.

Avoid the provincial, go for the universal.

Bull-shovel. Go for the provincial gritty detail. The waitress with a mole on her eyelid that flashes when she blinks. We identify the so-called UNIVERSAL, in Literature's gritty details --- the chipped shell, not the ocean.

Think subjectively, write objectively.

Like IMAGINE riding a camel to the Great Pyramid and writing your name on it with a can of spray paint?

Don't bow down to critics who have not themselves written great masterpieces.

Well, if you are lucky enough to have critics, pay attention to them --- they're probably right.

Work on a frontier if you can find one, go to sea, or work near water and paddle your own boat.

Paddle your own boat? There's one for Bartlett's Quotations.

Associate with thinking poets, they're hard to find.

Um hum.

Don't be so open minded that your brains fall out.

Luckily all the young poets sitting in the audience that day were thinking, "jeeze ... are we getting lunch out of this?"

Be a poet, not a huckster. Don't cater, don't pander, especially not to possible audiences, readers, or editors, or publishers.

Or young poets.

Come out of your closet, it's dark in there.

Go back in your closet, it's dark in there.

Which is, of course --- and man oh man, do I have to explain everything --- yes, the mystic source of poetry and art. From the dark into the light. We know that. A tree sends roots into the black blood of the earth, where the slimmest nutrients are sucked up into The Tree of Life and Light, making all those trillions of shimmering Aspen leaves.

Be committed to something outside yourself. Be militant about it. Or ecstatic.

Be committed to having the office of Poet Laureate of San Francisco abolished through a City Wide School Poetry Contest where the winning student gets to fire the Principle Poemster, with a poem, of course .

To be a poet at 16 is to be 16. To be a poet at forty is to be a poet. Be both.

Well, okay I guess ... but, I'm only 62 ...

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