Photos: Emma Pile
Elizabethtown College is showcasing the artwork and poetry of French-American activist Lawrence Ferlinghetti until Wednesday, Nov. 21. His artwork can be viewed in the Lyet Gallery on the second floor of Leffler Chapel and Performance Center, and his poetry is on display at the Bowers Writers House.
Essential figures in bringing these works to the campus are professor of art Milt Friedly and Bowers Writers House Director Jesse Waters. These two professors curated Ferlinghetti’s works on campus, with the assistance of Ferlinghetti’s personal friend and George Krevsky, ’62.
There is a lot to unpack and contextualize with Ferlinghetti’s work, and it is for this reason that his work has been and continues to be considered so important.
In his director’s statement, Friedly described Ferlinghetti’s artwork as “well informed, daring, expressive and challenging.”
Similarly, Waters describes Ferlinghetti’s poetry as having “a certain amount of visceral, sensual depth.”
When trying to ascertain why the College is showcasing this particular artist at this time, there are two main responses. The goal in showcasing Ferlinghetti’s works is, in part, to give alumni visiting for Homecoming “the chance to experience something new, unique, and international” on campus, according to Waters.
Beyond appealing to returning Blue Jays, there is also a political context to this campus exhibition as shown by Krevsky taking the time prior to reading his selected Ferlinghetti poems aloud to implore the attending audience to vote in the upcoming midterm election.
“When you face the world, I want you to vote because democracy has a gyroscope, and you’re part of the gyroscope,” George Krevsky said. “Whatever you believe in, make it happen.”
Krevsky, in curating his friend’s works, claimed to have a particular pull towards the painting entitled “Liberty #5 (Tilt)” which portrays the Statue of Liberty sinking into the sea.
“I think democracy is very fragile right now, [so] I wanted that painting shown…we need to really pay attention to what is going on in the country we love,” he said.
Friedly described Ferlinghetti’s work as transcending “just making ‘art for arts sake’; [The pieces] are a voice that speaks loudly to injustice in this world, a voice that carries courage for new generations to move forward.”
In thinking about the impact of Ferlinghetti’s poetry, Waters agrees that “now is the perfect time to showcase the art and poetry of someone like Lawrence [Ferlinghetti] because it shows a kind of creative and critical thinking that we all need to be engaged with.”
In talking with some of the attendees of the Bowers Writers House’s poetry reading, there was a similar sense of Ferlinghetti’s importance.
Senior Emily Wieder expressed that she was intrigued by how Ferlinghetti’s work had a quality to it that was “weird, not quite surrealist, but definitely avant-garde.”
Nicole St. Pierre, ’12 read a poem of Ferlinghetti’s at the event. She did not have a familiarity with Ferlinghetti until Waters had offered for her to read “Wild Dreams of a New Beginning,” but after experiencing his works found an appreciation for how his poems “read like a story.”
She also spoke more broadly about the Bowers Writers House and its events, valuing them as “a good way to introduce lesser known artists” and emphasizing that they “encourage the community to engage with different authors.”
When asked how he would summarize his friend’s work, Krevsky offered that he felt it was, in one word, “gutsy.”
Waters echoed this, elaborating that it was more of a “bohemian gutsy.”
As Ferlinghetti says himself in his poem “The Dog,” he has “something to say / about reality / and how to see it / and how to hear it.”
While in a bookstore in the San Francisco Ferry Building, Krevsky wrote a poem to Ferlinghetti, lamenting how his works had gone “ignored by passerbys / who barely knew your name / never knew your fame.”
As a result of the collaboration between Krevsky, Friedly and Waters, Ferlinghetti has the opportunity to be known once more.
