"Constantly risking absurdity and death whenever he performs above the heads of his audience, the poet, like an acrobat, climbs on rhyme to a high wire of his own making"
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Art isn’t safe, and Ferlinghetti refuses to pretend otherwise. His image of the poet “above the heads of his audience” flips the usual romantic pose of the solitary genius: the poet is elevated, yes, but only because a crowd is there to witness the stunt - and to judge the fall. Performance becomes exposure. Writing isn’t the quiet craft of arranging pretty words; it’s a public act that courts humiliation (“absurdity”) as much as it courts annihilation (“death”), with the poet balancing on something as thin and unforgiving as a wire.
The genius of the metaphor is that the “high wire” is “of his own making.” The poet can’t blame the conditions. Form itself - rhyme, rhythm, the chosen constraints - is both ladder and trap. “Climbs on rhyme” makes rhyme sound less like decoration than like infrastructure: the thing that lifts you into risk. It’s a rebuke to poets who treat technique as mere ornament and a rebuke to audiences who treat poems as safe entertainment. If you want the thrill, you also have to accept the possibility of failure.
Context matters: Ferlinghetti, a Beat-era catalyst and City Lights publisher, spent a career fighting the idea that poetry should stay polite, cloistered, or obedient. The line carries the Beat suspicion of respectable culture, but it’s not anti-craft; it’s craft with stakes. He’s arguing that the poem is a dare: build your own wire, step onto it, and let the crowd feel how easily beauty becomes disaster.
The genius of the metaphor is that the “high wire” is “of his own making.” The poet can’t blame the conditions. Form itself - rhyme, rhythm, the chosen constraints - is both ladder and trap. “Climbs on rhyme” makes rhyme sound less like decoration than like infrastructure: the thing that lifts you into risk. It’s a rebuke to poets who treat technique as mere ornament and a rebuke to audiences who treat poems as safe entertainment. If you want the thrill, you also have to accept the possibility of failure.
Context matters: Ferlinghetti, a Beat-era catalyst and City Lights publisher, spent a career fighting the idea that poetry should stay polite, cloistered, or obedient. The line carries the Beat suspicion of respectable culture, but it’s not anti-craft; it’s craft with stakes. He’s arguing that the poem is a dare: build your own wire, step onto it, and let the crowd feel how easily beauty becomes disaster.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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