dublinka

Lawrence Ferlinghetti has released a reading made in Potsdamer Platz, Berlin in 2004. It includes the fantastic History of the Airplane, a beat polemic on planes, war and capitalism, and is worth getting for this alone. It begins with the Wright brothers who "thought they had invented something that could make peace on earth, if the wrong brothers didn't get hold of it" leading to the day the third world struck back and "stormed the great planes and flew them into the beating heart of skyscraper America". On first listen it's powerful stuff, and followed by the melodic Allen Ginsberg is dying you'll find yourself listening to it over and over. Certain criticisms in the poems lose their strength after a while, and there's a certain hokey 1960's feel to it, but hearing this audio really brings Ferlinghetti to an immediacy in a way that the printed word never could. Let's hope he records everything.(Tnx D.)