Poetry: Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "Constantly Risking Absurdity"

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/184167

- "Constantly Risking Absudity" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti from A Coney Island of the Mind

In my opinion this is the most brilliant poem of the 20th century due to the fact that it functions on two distinct stylistic levels. On one level you have Ferlinghetti trying to capture the image and feeling of an acrobat performing, which he accomplishes through syntax the use of imagery. What Ferlighetti has done, in the words of Holcomb and Killingsworth, is that he has established a strong image that he is going to use as the focal point of the "vignette" that is his poem (Holcomb and Killingsworth 135) .

Ferlinghetti chooses to structure the poem the way he does in order to exploit syntax in a way that mimics the back and forth movement of an acrobat trying to balance himself or herself on a wire. He also uses enjambment to create a tension between each of the lines to mimic how the acrobat feels on the high wire and the tension he feels building up to his eventual leap of faith at the end of the poem. Ferlinghetti also uses extensive imagery to mimic the acrobat. One particular image that always leaps out to me when I read this poem is " with gravity to start her death defying leap...spread-eagled in the empty air of existence" because I can easily picture that in my head.

The second level that this poem operates on is the extended metaphor of the poet being like an acrobat, delicately balancing on a "high wire of [their] own making" in deciding what to write with the ever-present eye of the audience bearing down on them. Another extended metaphor is used in describing the audience as looking up at the poet performing, which Ferlinghetti uses to capture how most people, when they read a poem, feel like everything the poet has said has completely gone over their head. In this way Ferlinghetti takes advantage of the power of images to establish more than one narrative (Holcomb and Killingsworth 142)

In this poem, Ferlinghetti's style consists of manipulating syntax and using vivid imagery in order to transcribe the feelings of an acrobat onto the a poet’s act of writing poetry. Ferlinghetti's poem serves as a perfect example of how free verse poetry isn't as "free" as people think it is, it conforms to certain standards that nearly every single free verse poem adheres to. Since free verse poems lack the rhythm and meter of structured poems, they must find a way to create the same tension a rhyme scheme creates in different ways. They accomplish this by using vivid personal imagery in conjunction with varied and unusual syntax (a deviation in style that draws emphasis to itself), which most commonly comes in the form of enjambment due to its innate ability to either slow down or speed the pace of the readers eye between to lines of a poem. Ferlinghetti conforms, like many other free verse poets such as E.E. Cummings and William Carlos Williams, to these tenants of free verse poetry in this poem, in another example of how free verse poetry isn't really a blank check to write what ever you want and call it poetry.