Lawrence Ferlinghetti "Ferlinghetti: Rebirth of Wonder "Don't call me a Beat. I was never a Beat poet." Ferlinghetti actually penned much of his early poetry in the vein of T. S. Eliot. Ferlinghetti told poet and critic Jack Foley "Everything I wrote sounded just like him." Yet, even in his poems inspired by Eliot such as Ferlinghetti's "Constantly Risking Absurdity," Ferlinghetti is ever the populist as he compares the poet first to a trapeze artist in a circus and then to a "little charleychaplin man." Critics note that Ferlinghetti's poetry often takes on a very visual dimension as befits this poet who
Eric Robertson (literary critic) Eric Robertson (literary critic) Eric Robertson is Professor of Modern French Literary and Visual Culture at Royal Holloway, University of London. His research focuses primarily on 20th century French literature, especially poetry, and the visual arts, with particular emphasis on European Modernism and the avant-gardes. He is the author of "Arp: Painter, Poet, Sculptor" (2006), "Writing Between the Lines", a study of the bilingual novelist and essayist René Schickele (1995), and various articles and chapters on 20th century French literature, especially poetry, and visual arts. He is also the co-editor of "Yvan Goll - Claire Goll: Texts and Contexts" (1997),