“Constantly Risking Absurdity” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
This excerpt of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “Constantly Risking Absurdity” dramatizes the relationship between a poet’s attempt at composing a piece of poetry with the skillfully graceful maneuvers of an acrobat performing high above an audience. From the start of the poem, Ferlinghetti presents a speaker who immediately begins to ponder the consequences and implications of composing poetry, reminding himself of the critiques that may await, “Constantly risking absurdity / and death / whenever he performs,” (Ferlinghetti 1-3). The speaker’s immediate acknowledgement of this fate reveals the central conflict plaguing his creation of poetry: it won’t be understood. The “absurdity" he references hasn’t been truly defined yet by the audience, the speaker is instead “risking” that his own perception of beauty in poetry is something reflected in the listeners’ minds. The “death” this poet risks along with absurdity metaphorically begins the association with the swinging acrobat. A high flying acrobat does “risk” that actual fear and consequence of a physical death, yet the speaker references possibly a more emotional or artistic “death” to the poet, whose ideas and creativity are at risk of “death” more so than his physical existence.
Continuing this extended metaphor of the poet being an acrobat, the speaker describes the poet as performing, “above the heads / of his audience,” (4-5). Although literal from the acrobat’s point of view, the speaker’s diction indicates a more figurative interpretation of performing “above the heads” of the audience. By attempting to create beautiful poetry, the speaker concludes that he could be “risking absurdity” by going over the “heads” of his audience and communicating ideas or themes not able to be understood by the audience. In this sense, the speaker’s metaphor not only reflects the death defying heights acrobats perform at, but also the sensation of detachment “his...