Not P but Beat: Lawrence Ferlinghetti Centennial Interview

[Mark Kohut]

As Nietzsche is always asking, "Why is there still pity?" 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jan 9, 2019, at 10:43 AM, Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Thank you very much, Allan: nice photograph.
> 
> I think the poem is about 12 years old, there's a clip on youtube from 2007
> (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKCblAJtzgE) where it is called a recent
> effort.
> 
> Am Mi., 9. Jan. 2019 um 14:58 Uhr schrieb Allan Balliett <
> allan.balliett at gmail.com>:
> 
>> Ferlinghetti has a new book coming out in March to commemorate his
>> hundredth birthday. He talks about it, the state of American and the state
>> of San Francisco, month other things here
>> <
>> http://www.documentjournal.com/2018/12/lawrence-ferlinghetti-on-the-old-san-francisco-his-new-novel-and-his-first-100-years/
>> .
>> 
>> Here's an old poem of his, sorry, don't have the date, but it's probably
>> from the Nixon-era, making it a deomonstrtion of Trump as a logical
>> "evolution" of American politics, not a malignancy that appeared out of
>> nowhere.
>> 
>> 
>> “Pity the Nation” (After Khalil Gibran)
>> 
>> ‘Pity the nation whose people are sheep
>> And whose shepherds mislead them
>> Pity the nation whose leaders are liars Whose sages are silenced
>> 
>> And whose bigots haunt the airwaves Pity the nation that raises not its
>> voice Except to praise conquerors
>> And acclaim the bully as hero
>> 
>> And aims to rule the world
>> By force and by torture
>> Pity the nation that knows
>> No other language but its own
>> And no other culture but its own
>> Pity the nation whose breath is money And sleeps the sleep of the too well
>> fed Pity the nation oh pity the people
>> 
>> who allow their rights to erode
>> and their freedoms to be washed away
>> My country, tears of thee
>> Sweet land of liberty!’
>> 
>> -Allan in WV
>> --
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> --
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