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    A Study Guide for Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "Constantly Risking Absurdity"
    A Study Guide for Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "Constantly Risking Absurdity"
    A Study Guide for Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "Constantly Risking Absurdity"
    Ebook37 pages31 minutes

    A Study Guide for Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "Constantly Risking Absurdity"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "Constantly Risking Absurdity," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateSep 28, 2016
    ISBN9781535821025
    A Study Guide for Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "Constantly Risking Absurdity"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "Constantly Risking Absurdity" - Gale

      12

      Constantly Risking Absurdity

      Lawrence Ferlinghetti

      1958

      Introduction

      The fifteenth poem in Lawrence Ferlinghetti's collection A Coney Island of the Mind (1958), one of the best-selling poetry collections of the modern era, is called Constantly Risking Absurdity. After Allen Ginsberg's Howl (1956)—which was published by Ferlinghetti's San Francisco bookstore press, then called City Lights Pocketbook Shop—lit a fire under mid-1950s American society, A Coney Island of the Mind helped fan the poetic flames across the nation, bringing unprecedented attention to the revolutionary worldview propagated in the poetry and prose of the Beat Generation. Although Ferlinghetti did not consider himself one of the Beats, his 1958 collection echoes Beat aesthetics in invoking classic thought from the Greeks to the transcendentalists, drawing on Eastern spirituality, and advocating individual freedom of mind and independence from the traditional strictures of government and public society. Ferlinghetti would remain artistically productive throughout the twentieth century, but his earliest work is often considered in the context of both the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Renaissance, dated from 1955 to 1960. Constantly Risking Absurdity is a tribute to the poet as performer, using an analogy between poet and acrobat that serves to highlight the poet's need for pristine verbal skill, the impeccable perception of truth, and a proper reverence toward beauty.

      Author Biography

      Ferlinghetti was born as Lawrence Ferling on March 24, 1919, in Yonkers, New York, the fifth and last son born to an immigrant Italian auctioneer and a Portuguese-Jewish mother. He restored his surname to the family's original version, Ferlinghetti, in 1954. Ferlinghetti's life began under tragic circumstances, as his father died months before he was born. His mother became so overwhelmed by the fight against poverty that she was soon institutionalized at the state hospital in Poughkeepsie. While his brothers were sent to a boarding home, Ferlinghetti was taken by his mother's aunt, Emily Mendes-Monsanto, who promptly left her husband and raised the baby boy in France for five years.

      After they returned to New York, Ferlinghetti ended up in an orphanage in Chappaqua for seven difficult months. His great-aunt then arranged for him to be raised in Bronxville by the wealthy Bisland family, for whom

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