Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "The world is a beautiful place"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 5 January 2024

⏱️ 4 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today’s poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti is another fitting meditation at the beginning of a new year. Happy reading (and listening)!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
0:04.1	I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Friday, January 5th, 2024.
0:10.0	Today's poem is by Lawrence Ferlingetti, and it's called The World is a Beautiful Place.
0:18.0	I read it just once today, and before I do that, I will just mention that I admire this poem because
0:24.6	it doesn't let you decide right away whether it's a sincere poem or not, and it teeters on the
0:34.6	brink of cynicism. But I like that it really seems to be capturing a real
0:42.4	wrestling with cynicism, which, if we're honest with ourselves, is a very real part of everyday life.
0:52.0	And if you look at the poem on the page, the text itself seems to
0:57.0	represent that the lines pull in one direction and they swing to the other direction, which is
1:04.5	common in Ferland Getty's poetry, but it always seems to mean something. I think in the end, though, the poem and the
1:14.6	speaker in the poem decide decidedly upon sincerity, but then there's that end note that comes
1:23.9	and get you. Here is, the world is a beautiful place, just in time for the birth of the new year.
1:36.5	The world is a beautiful place to be born into, if you don't mind happiness, not always
1:41.4	being so very much fun, if you don't mind a touch of hell now and then,
1:46.2	just when everything is fine. Because even in heaven, they don't sing all the time. The world is a
1:52.1	beautiful place to be born into. If you don't mind some people dying all the time, or maybe
1:57.1	only starving some of the time, which isn't half so bad if it isn't you.
2:02.5	Though the world is a beautiful place to be born into, if you don't much mind a few dead
2:07.5	minds in the higher places, or a bomb or two now and then in your upturned faces, or such
2:13.4	other improprieties as our name brand society is prey to, with its men of distinction, and its men of extinction, and its priests and other patrolmen, and its various segregations and congressional investigations, and other constipations that our full flesh is heir to.
2:30.3	Yes, the world is the best place of all, for a lot of such things as making the fun scene,
2:36.7	and making the love scene, and making the sad scene, and singing low songs of having
	...

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