Gioia Woods, author of City Lights: Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and the Biography of a Bookstore reads Dog by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Contents
Books
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Guest
Dr. Gioia Woods earned her Ph.D. in English with an emphasis in American and Environmental Literature from the University of Nevada, Reno in 1999. She is a Professor of Humanities in the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies where she teaches classes in environmental humanities; race, ethnicity, and gender; and cultural studies. Her ongoing scholarship and publications are in American and comparative literatures, ecocriticism, and mid-twentieth-century cultural production.
Since 2013 Dr. Woods has directed the Summer Sustainability Program in Siena, a faculty-led interdisciplinary program designed to explore the relationship between nature and culture in Italy’s Tuscany region. Dr. Woods is the Past President of the Western Literature Association, a former board member and project leader for the Arizona Humanities Council, and a recent Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Milan. Since 2017 she has served as the NAU Faculty Senate President.
She is the author of the Western Writers Series monograph Gary Paul Nabhan, co-editor of Western Subjects: Autobiographical Writing in the North American West, and editor of Left in the West: Literature, Culture, and Progressive Politics in the American West. Her latest book is City Lights: Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the Biography of a Bookstore.
Credits
Medium History explores memories and moments through creativity and expression, capturing the cultural ethos of that time and place through storytelling and representation. Visual material culture, such as art, and other multimodal forms can elicit responses, emotions, and opinions—human expressions, tied to temporal and cultural aesthetics. This program explores how creative mediums provide context for history beyond dates, and names, and figures.
Word Choice: The Structure, Form, and Discourse of History is a special series will explore how poetry consecrates the human experience during times of upheaval; civil unrest, climate crises, global conflict, and also in times of celebration; equity, freedom, progress. Poets capture the soul of history, giving words to the moments that leave us speechless.
Produced with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University with support from the Orange County Community Foundation.
Guest: Dr. Gioia Woods
Hosts: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by: Past Forward
Date recorded: March 12, 2025
Past Forward is providing this podcast as a public service. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Please read our Program and Product Disclaimer for more information.
Transcription
[00:00:02] Host: In this season of Medium History, as we explore how poetry can capture a time and place as it reflects the human experience of that moment, we want to let the poetry speak for itself. Here is Gioia Woods reading Dog by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Listen to the full conversation with Gioia Woods to hear more about the life and work of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the history of City Lights Bookstore.
[00:00:28] Dr. Gioia Woods: One of the great examples, I think, from Ferlinghetti's work is his poem calledDog, which was published in his 1958 bestselling collection, Coney Island of the Mind. And I think it's important for the listeners to know that in this poem, he references Congressman Doyle. And Congressman Doyle was a San Francisco member of the Statehouse who was also a member of the House Un-American Activities Commission. So Ferlinghetti saw him as an enemy. So this poem mixes his critique with his observation and his autobiography, which is, this is quintessential Ferlinghetti. It's really lovely.
Dog.
The dog trots freely in the street and sees reality and the things he sees are bigger than himself and the things he sees are his reality—drunks in doorways, moons on trees. The dog trots freely through the street and the things he sees are smaller than himself—fish on newsprint, ants in holes, chickens in Chinatown windows, their heads a block away. The dog trots freely in the street and the things he smells smell something like himself. The dog trots freely in the street past puddles and babies, cars and cigars, pool rooms and policemen. He doesn't hate cops. He merely has no use for them. And he goes past them and past the dead cows hung up whole in front of the San Francisco meat market. He would rather eat a tender cow than a tough policeman, though either might do. And he goes past the Romeo ravioli factory and past Coit's Tower and past Congressman Doyle. He's afraid of Coit's Tower, but he's not afraid of Congressman Doyle. Although what he hears is very discouraging, very depressing, very absurd to a sad young dog like himself, to a serious dog like himself. But he has his own free world to live in, his own fleas to eat. He will not be muzzled. Congressman Doyle is just another fire hydrant to him. The dog trots freely in the street and has his own dog's life to live and to think about and to reflect upon, touching and tasting and testing everything, investigating everything without benefit of perjury. A real realist with a real tale to tell and a real tale to tell it with. A real live barking democratic dog engaged in real free enterprise with something to say about ontology, something to say about reality and how to see it and how to hear it. With his head cocked sideways at street corners, as if he is just about to have his picture taken for Victor Records, listening for his master's voice and looking like a living question mark into the great gramophone of puzzling existence with his wondrous hollow horn, which always seems just about to spout forth some victorious answer to everything.
[00:03:51] Host: We'd like to thank Gioia Woods, University of Nevada Press, and City Lights Bookstore. Medium History is produced by Past Forward with support from Chapman University's Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and Dr. Stephanie Takaragawa. For more socially conscious content, visit pastforward.org or follow us on Apple, Spotify or wherever you podcast.
