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Constantly risking absurdity
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Constantly Risking Absurdity

Lawrence Ferlinghetti New Directions Publishing Corp. "Constantly Risking Absurdity" from A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, copyright © 1958 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Reprinted/recorded by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

During Reading Strategy
Use Text Organization as You Read

Vocabulary from the Selection
perforce

Guided Reading Question 1
What types of tricks does the poet perform?
Click to answer

    Constantly risking absurdity
        and death
    whenever he performs
        above the heads
5           of his audience
    the poet like an acrobat
        climbs on rime1
          to a high wire of his own making
  and balancing on eyebeams2
10         above a sea of faces
    paces his way
      to the other side of day
    performing entrechats3
        and sleight-of-foot tricks
15   and other high theatrics
        and all without mistaking
    any thing
      for what it may not be
  For he’s the super realist
20       who must perforce perceive
    taut truth
      before the taking of each stance or step
    in his supposed advance
        toward that still higher perch
25   where Beauty stands and waits
        with gravity
    to start her death-defying leap
  And he
    a little charleychaplin4 man
30         who may or may not catch
    her fair eternal form
        spreadeagled in the empty air
    of existence

Guided Reading Question 2
How does an acrobat risk absurdity? How does a poet risk absurdity?
Click to answer

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