Dark Wings of the Night: Outhouse and Frog Haiku by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Legendary Beat Poet, painter, social activist, and publisher (co-founder of City Lights, first all-paperback bookstore in San Francisco in 1953), Lawrence Ferlinghetti passed away two days ago, at the age of 101. His 1958 collection, A Coney Island of the Mind, remains one of the most popular poetry books in the U.S, and in 2007, he expanded his sphere of poetic influence by advocating a new vision of poetry in the Post-9/11 Era, “Poetry as Insurgent Art:”

Be subversive, constantly questioning reality and the status quo. Strive to change the world in such a way that there’s no further need to be a dissident. Read between the lives, and write between the lines. Be committed to something outside yourself. Be passionate about it. But don’t destroy the world, unless you have something better to replace it.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti never published any haiku collections, but in his Kyoto Journal interview with Carl Freire, he talked about his first time haiku submission experience:

There was a very early American haiku magazine, and I can't remember who was the editor, the first one in this country who got onto the haiku horse. This was in the 60s, probably. He asked me for a haiku -- I sent him this:

Ancient frog 

In ancient outhouse 

Plop!

And he rejected it, he said that won't do, it's too vulgar, it's obscene...

  

Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "vulgar haiku" was later published in Poor Old Tired Horse, Issue 3

Sawmill Haiku

An ancient frog

in an ancient outhouse

Plop!

(FYI:  Poor Old Tired Horse was published by Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Wild Hawthorn Press and ran for 25 issues from 1961 to 1967)

To conclude today's memorial post for Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the following "vulgar/obscene haiku," written by his friend and Beat Poet Gary Snyder, could be read both as a sequel to his frog and outhouse haiku and a poetic response to the rejection reply from the editor, "the first one in this country who got onto the haiku horse."

 pissing

 watching

   a

waterfall

(FYI: For detailed analysis of Gary Snyder's "pissing haiku", see "To the Lighthouse: Word Choice, the Center of the Practice of Writing")

Chen-ou