The pennycandystore beyond the El
 is where I first
                 fell in love
                             with unreality
 Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom
 of that september afternoon
 A cat upon the counter moved among
                           the licorice sticks
                and tootsie rolls
        and Oh Boy Gum

 Outside the leaves were falling as they died

 A wind had blown away the sun

 A girl ran in
 Her hair was rainy
 Her breasts were breathless in the little room

 Outside the leaves were falling
                      and they cried
                                   Too soon!  too soon!

Thanks to Sonya Bhagat for introducing me to today’s poem

Note: The El was the New York City ‘9th Avenue Elevated’ railway line

Today’s poem touches upon another of my favourite themes - the magic unreality that childhood can imbue the world with. The pennycandystore (and don’t you just love the way it’s runtogetherasoneword?) takes on the aspect of an enchanted cave, a little enclave of magic, wonder and, of course, candy offering a retreat from the grey September day.

The contrasting images are nicely drawn - the glowing jellybeans and the cat atop the counter within, and without, the rain, the sunlessness, and the ‘leaves falling as they died’. And as a distinct chord, there’s the fact that the half-light, the rainy autumnal setting has a magic all its own - a slightly more personal reading of the poem, perhaps, but one borne out by phrases like ‘a wind had blown away the sun’, and the girl whose hair was ‘rainy’. It’s mostly the connotations of the words - ‘wet’ is damp, sodden, unattractive. ‘Rainy’ is little drops of water sparkling even in the semi-gloom of the afternoon, complementing the image of the flushed, ‘breathless’ girl.

Of course, the symbolism in the last verse is a gloomy reminder that all this is evanescent, that childhood passes too soon. But, as the girl running into the candy store seems to proclaim, for the moment, it doesn’t really matter, does it?

Biography

Levi Asher’s ‘Literary Kicks’ site has an excellent biography and assessment of Ferlinghetti. Quoting a bit I particularly liked

Ferlinghetti is still active today as a poet and as the proprietor of City Lights. I hope I won’t seem politically incorrect for saying this, but after immersing myself in the writings of the guilt-obsessed asexual Jack Kerouac, the ridiculously horny Allen Ginsberg and the just plain sordid William S. Burroughs … it’s nice to read a few poems by a guy who can get excited about a little penny candy store under the El or a pretty woman letting a stocking drop to the floor.

– http://www.litkicks.com/People/LawrenceFerlinghetti.html

I’d strongly encourage you to go read the full thing, and explore the rest of the site while you’re at it.

Links

For a beautiful page on the El, complete with pictures, see http://www.nycsubway.org/irt/irt-els/9th-ave-el.html

Penny candy seems to be a dying tradition, albeint one being revived by nostalgists. See http://lkwdpl.org/lore/lore148.htm for example.

Let me recommend once again the Literary Kicks site http://www.litkicks.com, a vibrant paean to the Beat generation, and Asher’s other project, a self-styled ‘web album’ entitled ‘Queensboro Ballads’ which no lover of NYC should miss, at http://www.levity.com/brooklyn/.

The first poem today’s called to mind was Millay’s ‘The Unexplorer’,
poem #49

Not far behind it was Heaney’s ‘Song’, poem #61

And, on the New York front, ‘Teasdale’s Central Park at Dusk’, poem #464

— Martin