SOURCE: "The 'Spiritual Optics' of Lawrence Ferlinghetti," in The Daybreak Boys: Essays on the Literature of the Beat Generation, Southern Illinois University Press, 1990, pp. 139-153.

In the following essay, Stephenson describes the visual imagery recurring in several of Ferlinghetti's poems and plays, and in the novel, Her. He suggests that Ferlinghetti believes man to be fragmented by the opposing forces of love and power.

     The Sun's Light when he unfolds it
     Depends on the Organ that beholds it.
 
                         "What is Man?"—William Blake

     The Eye of man a little narrow orb,
     clos'd up & dark,
     scarcely beholding the great light,
     conversing with the Void.
 
                                 "Milton"—William Blake

I remember clearly that what impressed me and attracted me in the poetry of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, when I first read it as an adolescent twenty-five years ago, was its quality of mystery. By mystery I do not mean obscurity or hermeticism nor...