Analyzing of “In Goya's Greatest Scenes We Seem to See”
By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

       Perhaps Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s greatest work, “In Goya's Greatest Scenes We Seem to See” addresses compares life in a former age to life in the present time.  Ferlinghetti shows us the relatively relaxed life of the old age compared to the new tense life of the present age.  At the end of his poem, Ferlinghetti states that cars have wrecked America.  The car symbolizes advancement, technology, and the progress of time.  This means that when humanity started to advance, we ruined our old simplistic lives.

Ferlinghetti also discusses the creation and destruction of human beings.  This symbolizes the creation and destruction of the different ages as new and more advanced era’s take over.  Ferlinghetti says in some of the greatest times people “attained the title of suffering humanity.”  He means that when some miraculous feats are taking place in the world, we are destroying the simplicity of life and that is why we are labeled as “suffering humanity.”  By using vivid language and his unique style of writing Ferlinghetti uses poetry to create a bridge between humanity’s past and sickening present.

In Goya's greatest scenes we seem to see
the people of the world
exactly at the moment when
they first attained the title of
"suffering humanity"
They write upon the page in a
veritable rage
of adversity
Heaped up
groaning with babies and bayonets
under cement skies
in an abstract landscape of blasted trees
bent statues bats wings and beaks
slippery gibbets cadavers and carnivorous cocks
and all the final hollering monsters
of the
"imagination of disaster"
they are so bloody real
it is as if they really still existed
And they do only the landscape is changed
They are still ranged along the roads
plagued by legionaries
false windmills and demented roosters
They are the same people
only further from home
on freeways fifty lanes wide
on a concrete continent
spaced with bland billboards
illustrating imbecile illusions of happiness 

The scene shows fewer tumbrils
but more maimed citizens
in painted cars
and they have strange license plates
and engines
that devour America

Analyzing "A Vast Confusion"
By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Long long I lay in the sands
Sounds of trains in the surf
in subways of the sea
And an even greater undersound
of a vast confusion in the universe
a rumbling and a roaring
as of some enormous creature turning
under sea and earth
a billion sotto voices murmuring
a vast muttering
a swelling stuttering
in ocean's speakers
world's voice-box heard with ear to sand
a shocked echoing
a shocking shouting
of all life's voices lost in night
And the tape of it
somehow running backwards now
through the Moog Synthesizer of time
Chaos unscrambled
back to the first
harmonies
And the first light

A talented man in many arts, Ferlinghetti uses his skills in this poem, “A Vast Confusion”, to convey the difficulties that humanity has brought upon themselves and the rest of the world with technology advancement.  In this poem Ferlinghetti shows people of the present time have gotten wrapped up in advancement and technology, that it has become a great confusion to many.  Ferlinghetti describes this feeling as “an even greater undersound, (than the sea) of a vast confusion in the universe.”  By relating also to the chaos technology and advancement has caused humanity, Ferlinghetti portrays the simplicity of “harmonies and the first light.”  Through simple yet powerful words, Ferlinghetti depicts the truth of the world in the eyes of someone who has lived through many hardships.

Bird With Two Right Wings
By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

And now our government
a bird with two right wings
flies on from zone to zone
while we go on having our little fun & games
at each election
as if it really mattered who the pilot is
of Air Force One
(They're interchangeable, stupid!)
While this bird with two right wings
flies right on with its corporate flight crew
And this year its the Great Movie Cowboy in the cockpit
And next year its the great Bush pilot
And now its the Chameleon Kid
and he keeps changing the logo on his captains cap
and now its a donkey and now an elephant
and now some kind of donkephant
And now we recognize two of the crew
who took out a contract on America
and one is a certain gringo wretch
who's busy monkeywrenching
crucial parts of the engine
and its life-support systems
and they got a big fat hose
to siphon off the fuel to privatized tanks
And all the while we just sit there
in the passenger seats
without parachutes
listening to all the news that's fit to air
over the one-way PA system
about how the contract on America
is really good for us etcetera
As all the while the plane lumbers on
into its postmodern
manifest destiny

Baseball Canto
By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Watching baseball, sitting in the sun, eating popcorn,
reading Ezra Pound,
and wishing that Juan Marichal would hit a hole right through the
Anglo-Saxon tradition in the first canto
and demolish the barbarian invaders.
When the San Francisco Giants take the field
and everybody stands up for the National Anthem,
with some Irish tenor's voice piped over the loudspeakers,
with all the players struck dead in their places
and the white umpires like Irish cops in their black suits and little
black caps pressed over their hearts,
Standing straight and still like at some funeral of a blarney bartender,
and all facing east,
as if expecting some Great White Hope or the Founding Fathers to
appear on the horizon like 1066 or 1776.

But Willie Mays appears instead,
in the bottom of the first,
and a roar goes up as he clouts the first one into the sun and takes
off, like a footrunner from Thebes.
The ball is lost in the sun and maidens wail after him
as he keeps running through the Anglo-Saxon epic.
And Tito Fuentes comes up looking like a bullfighter
in his tight pants and small pointy shoes.
And the right field bleechers go made with Chicanos and blacks
and Brooklyn beer-drinkers,
"Tito! Sock it to him, sweet Tito!"
And sweet Tito puts his foot in the bucket
and smacks one that don't come back at all,
and flees around the bases
like he's escaping from the United Fruit Company.
As the gringo dollar beats out the pound
And sweet Tito beats it out like he's beating out usury,
not to mention fascism and anti-semitism.
And Juan Marichal comes up,
and the Chicano bleechers go loco again,
as Juan belts the first ball out of sight,
and rounds first and keeps going
and rounds second and rounds third,
and keeps going and hits paydirt
to the roars of the grungy populace.
As some nut presses the backstage panic button
for the tape-recorded National Anthem again,
to save the situation.

But it don't stop nobody this time,
in their revolution round the loaded white bases,
in this last of the great Anglo-Saxon epics,
in the territorio libre of Baseball