In honor of the 20th anniversary of National Poetry Month, we asked Entropy writers to share with us one of the first poems they ever read that got them excited about what poetry could do or changed the way that they thought about poetry, and one of their own poems that they are particularly proud of, still resonates with them, or an early poem.
INFLUENTIAL POEM:
One of the first poems I read that changed my views on poetry was from Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind.
A Coney Island Of The Mind – “18”
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Frightened
by the sound of my own voice
and by the sound of birds
singing on hot wires
in sunday sleep I see myself
slaying sundry sinners and turkeys
loud dogs with sharp dead dugs
and black knights in iron suits
with Brooks labels
and Yale locks upon the pants
Yes
and with penis erectus for spear
I slay all old ladies
making them young again
with a touch of my sweet swaying sword
retrouving them their maiden
hoods and heads
ah yes
in flattering falsehoods of sleep
we come we conquer all
but all the while
real standard time ticks on
and new bottled babies with real teeth
devour our fantastic
fictioned future
A POEM FROM THE AUTHOR:
I will eat the flesh of your flesh because I am designed to do
The ghost of the south is here always inside your root
Give into the root give into the crunkjuice inside you
The need to procreate trumps the need for new
To spill seed is sin so spill seed all over me
spill it, good fuck
