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
T. S. Eliot same time infusing this portrayal with—in Eliot's view—wit and uniqueness. Eliot's essay "The Metaphysical Poets", along with giving new significance and attention to metaphysical poetry, introduced his now well-known definition of "unified sensibility", which is considered by some to mean the same thing as the term "metaphysical". His 1922 poem "The Waste Land" also can be better understood in light of his work as a critic. He had argued that a poet must write "programmatic criticism", that is, a poet should write to advance his own interests rather than to advance "historical scholarship". Viewed from Eliot's critical lens, "The Waste