And do, and do, and now my will hath done!”
Ah, love, I tell thee true, nor false affix
The solitude I watched by th’iron prow:
While I interpreted I stared me sick
At transformations in the tides below;
For the grim bride rose up, and all surrounding,
Carried me through the star-piercèd air,
Till I cried Stay! and Stay! surrendering
My movèd soul in flight to faster fear.
As I dived then I cried, delving all depthed in foam,
“Now close in weeds thy wave-lipped womb, mistress!”
But she ope’d her watering wounds and drew me down
And drove me dancing through the white-wreathed darkness.
Though I stood still to memorize the deep,
And woke my eyes wild-wide upon the height,
My soul it feareth its descent to keep,
My soul it turneth in its famous flight.
IV
Ha! now I die or no, I fear this tide
Carrieth me still, perishing, past where I stood,
So mild, to gaze whereat I long had died,
Or shall, as well, in future solitude.
What other shores are there I still remember?
I was in a pale land, I looked through a pure vision
In a pallid dawn, with a half-vacant glare.
Alas! what harbour hath the imagination?
O the transparent past hath a white port,
Tinted in the eye; it doth appear
Sometime on dark days, much by night, to sport
Bright shades like dimes of silver shining there,
On red dull sands on green volcanic shores.
I thought these stanzas out this cloudy noon,
Past Cuba now, past Haiti’s stony jaws,
In the last passage to Dakar. The moon
Alone was full as it had been all year,
Orange and strange at dawn. It was my eyes,
Not Africa, did this: they shined so pure
Each island floated by a sweet surprise.
Coins, then, on Cape Verde’s peakèd cones
Sparkle out with pallors various.
It makes me God to pass these mortal towns:
Real people sicken here upon slopes sulphurous.
So in my years I saw my serious cities
Colored with Love and chiming with Nightingales,
Architectural with fantasies,
With fools in schools and geniuses in jails.
When in sweet vivid dreams such rainbows rise,
and spectral children dance among the music,
I watch them still: hot emeralds are their eyes!
My eyes are ice, alas! How white I wake!
V
Twenty days have drifted in the wake
Of this slow agèd ship that carries coal
From Texas to Dakar. I, for the sake
Of little but my causelessness of soul,
Am carried out of my chill hemisphere
To unfamiliar summer on the earth.
I spend my days to meditate a fear;
Each day I give the sea is one of death.
This is the last night of the outward journeying,
The darkness falleth westward unto thee;
And I must end my labors of this evening,
And all the last long night, and all this day:
It doth give peace, thus to torment the soul,
Till it is sundered from its forms and sense,
Till it surrendereth its knowledge whole,
And stares on the world out of a sleepless trance.
So on these stanzas doth a peace descend,
Now I have journeyed through these images
To come upon no image in the end.
So are we consummated in these passages,
Most near and dear and far apart in fate.
As I mean no mere sweet philosophy,
So I, unto a world I must create,
Turn with no promise and no prophecy.
South Atlantic, 1947
Sweet Levinsky
27 LEVINSKY: Leon Levinsky is a character in Jack Kerouac’s The Town and the City.
A Poem on America
72 ACIS AND GALATEA … versilov: In Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s penultimate novel, A Raw Youth, hero Dolgoruki’s father, Versilov, the ex-revolutionary, wore a hair shirt and mused on Poussin’s painting.
II
THE GREEN AUTOMOBILE
(1953–1954)
The Green Automobile
94 NEAL: Neal Cassady, to whom the poem is dedicated.
Neal Cassady (1925–1968) in his first suit, bought second hand in Chinatown, 1946, the day before his return to Denver on Greyhound bus.
Sakyamuni Coming Out from the Mountain
98 SAKYAMUNI: Buddha (563–483 B.C.) Sage born to warrior-caste Sakya family; human aspect of Buddha. Poem interprets noted Chinese painting, Sung dynasty.
98 ARHAT: Self-liberated sage who has not taken Bodhisattva’s vows to liberate all sentient beings.
Havana 1953
100 CAB CALLOWAY: (b. 1907) Ex-law student, stage-show black jazz singer, slick-haired satin-suited early hipster popular band leader who composed and sang “Minnie the Moocher,” “Are You Hep to the Jive,” “Are You All Reet” and “Hi-De-Ho Man.”
101 VIVA JALISCO: Mexican state mariachi music macho whoop, like Viva Texas!
101 FREER: Gallery of Oriental Art, Mall adjunct to Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution.
Siesta in Xbalba
105 UXMAL …: Proper names mentioned in the first part of the poem are those of ruined cities. Xbalba, translatable as Morning Star in Region Obscure, or Hope, and pronounced Chivalvá, is the area in Chiapas between the Tabasco border and the Usumacinta River at the edge of the Petén rain forest; the boundary of lower Mexico and Guatemala today is thereabouts. The locale was considered a Purgatory, or Limbo (the legend is vague), in the (Old) Mayan Empire. To the large tree at the crest of what is now called Mount Don Juan, at the foot of which this poem was written, ancient craftsmen came to complete work left unfinished at their death.
On Burroughs Work
122 Written on receiving early “routines” from Burroughs in Tangier, including Dr. Benway in the Operating Room and The Talking Asshole.
W. S. Burroughs, 206 East 7th Street, N.Y.C., Fall 1953, at time assembling “Yage Letters” and visioning Inter-zone Market Naked Lunch. Photo by A.G.
III
HOWL, BEFORE AND AFTER: SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA
(1955–1956)
Malest Cornifici Tuo Catullo
131 MALEST, CORNIFICI, TUO CATULLO: Catullus #38, probably addressed to the erotic “new poet” friend of Catullus, a verse note beginning “I’m ill, Cornificus, your Catullus is ill,” asking for a little friendly word, and ending “Maestius lacrimis Simonideis”—“Sad as the tears of old Simonides.” Ginsberg to Kerouac, on meeting Peter Orlovsky.
Peter Orlovsky by Robert LaVigne, 1954, San Francisco. Author met Orlovsky immediately after viewing this painting, 1403 Gough Street.
Jack Kerouac on Avenue A, Manhattan, 1953, at time of The Subterraneans. Photo by A.G.
Dream Record: June 8, 1955
132 HUNCKE: Herbert E. Huncke (1915–1996), American prose writer. Friend and early contact for Kerouac, Burroughs and the author in explorations circa 1945 around Times Square, where he hung out at center of the hustling world in early stages of his opiate addictions. He served as connection to midtown’s floating population for Dr. Alfred Kinsey’s interviews with that population segment in his celebrated surveys of human sexuality. Huncke introduced Burroughs and others to the slang, information and ritual of the emergent “hip” or “beat” subculture. See the author’s preface to Huncke’s book of sketches and stories, The Evening Sun Turned Crimson (Cherry Valley, N.Y.: Cherry Valley Editions, 1980): “Huncke’s figure appears variously in Clellon Holmes’s novel Go, there is a
n excellent early portrait in Kerouac’s first bildungsroman The Town and the City, fugitive glimpses of Huncke as Gotham morphinist appear in William Lee’s Junkie, Burroughs’ dry first classic of prose. He walked on the snowbank docks with shoes full of blood into the middle of Howl, and is glimpsed in short sketches by Herb Gold, Carl Solomon and Irving Rosenthal scattered through subsequent decades. … Kerouac always maintained that he was a great story teller.”
Herbert Huncke, 1983. Photo by A.G.
Howl
134 PARADISE ALLEY: A slum courtyard N.Y. Lower East Side, site of Kerouac’s Subterraneans, 1958.
139 ELI ELI LAMMA LAMMA SABACTHANI: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Christ’s last words from the cross (“Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani”: Matthew 27:46).
139 MOLOCH: Or Molech, the Canaanite fire god, whose worship was marked by parents burning their children as propitiatory sacrifice. “And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech” (Leviticus 18:21).
A Supermarket in California
144 GARCíA LORCA
Not for one moment, old beautiful Walt Whitman,
have I failed to see your beard full of butterflies
nor your corduroy shoulders worn down by the moon …
Not for one moment, virile beauty who in mountains of coal, posters and railroads,
dreamed of being a river and sleeping like a river
with whatever comrade would lay on your breast
the little pain of an ignorant leopard.
—Federico García Lorca,
“Oda a Walt Whitman” (adapted by Allen Ginsberg)
Sir Francis Drake Hotel tower, Powell and Sutter Streets, San Francisco, seen from Nob Hill, original motif of Moloch section of Howl, Part II. Photo 1959 by Harry Redl. (See n.p. 139.)
America
154 WOBBLIES: International Workers of the World, strong on Northwest coast, some Anarchist-Buddhist-Populist tinge, primarily lumber and mining workers, pre-World War I activist precursors to organized American labor unions. For “I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night…” see Little Red Song Book.
155 TOM MOONEY: (1882–1942) Labor leader accused of bomb-throwing, 1919 San Francisco Preparedness Day Parade; imprisoned still protesting innocence till pardoned 1939 by Governor Earl Warren; cause célèbre in left-wing populist circles worldwide.
155 SACCO & VANZETTI: Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Italian-American anarchists convicted of robbery and murder, executed in Massachusetts, 1927, after international protest. Vanzetti’s last speech to the court: “I found myself compelled to fight back from my eyes the tears, and quanch my heart trobling to my throat to not weep before him. But Sacco’s name will live in the hearts of the people when your name, your laws, institutions and your false god are but a dim rememoring of a cursed past in which man was wolf to the man.” And a letter to his son, April 1927: “If it had not been for this thing I might have live out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have die unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man’s understanding of man, as now we do by accident. … Our words—our lives—our pains: nothing. The taking of our lives—lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler—all! That last moment, belongs to us—that agony is our triumph.”
155 SCOTTSBORO BOYS: Nine black youths arrested 1931 by mob in Paint Rock, Alabama, jailed in Scottsboro, set up and sentenced to death for alleged train rape of two white girls, despite popular belief in their innocence. Their cause focused international attention on Southern U.S. legal injustice and racial discrimination. Supreme Court reversed convictions twice, setting landmark precedents for adequate counsel representation and fair race-balanced juries.
155 SCOTT NEARING: (1883–1983) Sociology professor bounced from Academe for anti-World War I views, Socialist congressional candidate 1919, staunch pro-Soviet historian and autobiographer. In old age, Nearing evolved into “new age” counterculture role model with publication of Living the Good Life (pioneering, building, organic gardening, cooperation and vegetarian living on a self-subsistent Vermont homestead; working plans for a twenty-year project), 1954; and The Maple Sugar Book (account of the art and history of sugaring; practical details for modern sugar-making; remarks on pioneering as a way of living in the twentieth century), 1950; both coau-thored with Helen Nearing (reprint ed., New York: Schocken Books, 1970, 1971).
155 MOTHER BLOOR: Ella Reeve Bloor (1862–1951) Communist leader, writer, traveling union strike organizer and speechmaker.
155 EWIG-WEIBLICHE: (German) Eternal feminine.
155 ISRAEL AMTER: (1881–1954) A leading American Communist, Yiddish part of movement, traveling orator, ran for N.Y. governor 1930s.
Fragment 1956
157 TOMBS: New York City jailhouse.
Afternoon Seattle
158 MANDALA: Map of psychological universe, generally Hindu-Buddhist. See Time Wheel Mandala, p. 590.
158 SNYDER: Gary Snyder (b. 1930) Naturalist-woodsman, poet, early U.S. student of Zen, hitchhiked Northwest with author 1956, as described in poem. Prototype for Kerouac’s Dharma Bums hero.
158 GREEN PARROT THEATER: First Avenue vaudeville movie playhouse, whose marquee was celebrated for Art Nouveau design and extravagant variety of neon colors in tail of its green parrot insignia. At time of poem, the 1930s Nelson Eddy-Jeanette MacDonald movie Maytime was rerun. See Maytime song quotes, “Iron Horse.”
158 FRANK H. LITTLE: His dry mummy stood in a glass case in a curio shop on Seattle waterfront, as described.
IV
REALITY SANDWICHES: EUROPE! EUROPE!
(1957–1959)
To Aunt Rose
193 THE ATTIC OF THE PAST AND EVERLASTING MINUTE: Books of lyric poetry by the author’s father, Louis Ginsberg (1896–1976). The Everlasting Minute was published 1937 by Horace Liveright, N.Y. Certain poems were anthologized in various editions of Louis Untermeyer’s standard anthology Modern American and British Poetry.
Laughing Gas
198 SATORI: (Japanese) Sudden flash of enlightenment, awakening a glimpse of ordinary mind, often result of prolonged Zazen meditation practice. See also opening pages of Kerouac, Satori in Paris (New York: Grove Press, 1966). (There are various kinds of Satori: it is believed that a Zen master can recognize what kind and how profound, long lasting, or life-changing some person’s Satori is.—P.W.)
198 SUTRAS: Buddhist discourses or dialogues, joining teacher and student in transmission of Dharma, or doctrine, over generations.
201 CZARDAS: East European dance, wildly spirited.
202 SHERMAN ADAMS: Assistant to President Eisenhower, who did resign; involved in minor White House scandal for accepting fur coat as gift.
V
KADDISH AND RELATED POEMS
(1959–1960)
Kaddish
217 FIRST POISONOUS TOMATOES OF AMERICA: Russian immigrants to U.S. at turn of the century had not seen tomatoes; some believed them poisonous.
218 YPSL: Young People’s Socialist League.
221 GRAF ZEPPELIN: Refers to giant hydrogen-inflated German airship Hindenburg, destroyed in flames with 36 deaths while mooring at Lakehurst, N.J., May 6, 1937, arrived on its first transatlantic crossing.
222 PARCAE: The Three Fates: goddess Clotho, spinning thread of life; Lachesis, holding and fixing length; and Atropos, whose shears cut thread’s end.
222 THE GREEN TABLE: German Jooss Ballet’s 1930s classic, wherein warmonger capitalists in black tie and tails pirouette round long green table at diplomatic conference, arranging mobilization, combat, arms profit, refugee fate and division of spoils, with Death figure dancing in foreground throughout eight-scene parable WWI.
222 DEBS: Eugene Victor Debs (1855–1926) Rail union organizer, founder IWW, “one big union,” Socialist presidential candidate 1900–1920, ran from Atlanta penitentiary during ten-year sentence under so-cal
led Espionage Act for speech denouncing U.S. entry into WWI; received nearly 1 million votes 1920.
Naomi, Allen, and Louis Ginsberg, New York World’s Fair, June 15, 1940.
222 ALTGELD: John P. Altgeld (1847–1902) First Democratic governor of Illinois (1892–1896) since Civil War. Pardoned surviving anarchists of 1886 Haymarket Riots, initiated prison reform, protected laboring women and reformed child labor laws, opposed use of fed troops to suppress RR strikes, incorruptible, rich entering governorship, which he left penniless. See Vachel Lindsay’s poem “The Eagle That Is Forgotten”: “Sleep softly … eagle forgotten … under the stone. Time has its way with you there, and clay has its own. / ‘We have buried him now,’ thought his foes, and in secret rejoiced … / Sleep on, O brave hearted, O wise man, that kindled the flame— / To live in mankind is far more than to live in a name …”—Vachel Lindsay, Collected Poems (New York: Macmillan, 1925).
Hindenberg Explosion. (See n.p. 221.) The Bettmann Archive, Inc.
222 LITTLE BLUE BOOKS: Tiny blue-covered booklets, first mass-market paperbacks in U.S., freethinking content, distributed from immigrant socialist town Girard, southeast Kansas, by E. Haldeman-Julius (1889–1951), whose mission was to educate the masses by offering great literature at cheapest price, including all Shakespeare, much Oscar Wilde, Tom Paine, Clarence Darrow, Upton Sinclair, the agnostic orator Robert Ingersoll, and Mark Twain. For publishing The FBI—The Basis of an American Police State, The Alarming Methods of J. Edgar Hoover, by Clifton Bennett, 1948, Haldeman-Julius was hounded by FBI; withdrew The Black International, by Joseph McCabe, 20-pamphlet series exposing relation between Roman Catholic Church and fascist Axis.