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The art has to make it on its own, without explanations, and it’s the same for poetry. If the poem or the painting has to be explained, then it’s a failure in communication.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Age: 101 †
Born: 1919
Born: March 24
Died: 2021
Died: February 22
Activist Shareholder
Journalist
Military Officer
Painter
Peace Activist
Playwright
Poet
Publisher
Translator
Writer
Yonkers
New York State
Feilingedi
Lawrence Ferling
L. Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti
Without
Explained
Make
Poem
Explanation
Communication
Failure
Poetry
Painting
Art
Explanations

More quotes by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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We have seen the best minds of our generation destroyed by boredom at poetry readings.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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To say one is revolutionary is a little like saying one is a Zen Buddhist - if you say you are, you probably aren't.
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If you're too open-minded your brains will fall out.
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Recipe For Happiness Khaborovsk Or Anyplace' One grand boulevard with trees with one grand cafe in sun with strong black coffee in very small cups. One not necessarily very beautiful man or woman who loves you. One fine day.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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We have to raise the consciousness the only way poets can change the world is to raise the consciousness of the general populace.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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Today America's on the wrong side of the world revolution. What I mean by that is, the world revolution is the people's revolution, the liberation movements in all the third world countries, which when everyone tries to get started the U.S. stops.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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T.S. Eliot's influence was enormous on my generation. Much more than Ezra Pound. I actually had to put T.S. Eliot books out of the house because my poetry was so influenced. Everything I wrote sounded like Eliot.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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I am awaiting perpetually and forever a renaissance of wonder
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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Southern California, where the American Dream came too true.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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The real literary editors have mostly been fired. Those that remain are all 'bottom line' editors everything depends on the money.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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I feel there is an angel in me' she'd say 'whom I am constantly shocking
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There is an ecstatic mechanism in birds that makes them fly upwards in spite of worms.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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In Goya's greatest scenes we seem to see the people of the world exactly at the moment when they first attained the title of 'suffering humanity
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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Make your mind learn its way around the heart.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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Don't patronize the chain bookstores. Every time I see some author scheduled to read and sign his books at a chain bookstore, I feel like telling him he's stabbing the independent bookstores in the back.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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If you would be a poet, 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 for bullshit.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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I'm reading a book about Romaine Brooks, a wonderful painter from early in the last century.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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Almost every truly creative being alienated & expatriated in his own country
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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Poets, come out of your closets, Open your windows, open your doors, You have been holed up too long in your closed worlds... Poetry should transport the public/to higher places/than other wheels can carry it.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti