425 CRANE: See Hart Crane’s address to Whitman, The Bridge, end of Cape Hatteras section.
Bayonne Entering NYC
429 CANNASTRA: William Cannastra, ex-Harvard Law suicide-accident-dead (1950) friend of N.Y. painters and poets, including W. H. Auden and Jack Kerouac. See “In Memoriam,” September 1950.
Uptown
432 MADAME GRADY: Panna Grady, patron of letters, friend of poets Charles Olson, John Wieners and William Burroughs, once lived at Dakota Apartments, Central Park West, N.Y., and held literary salon there.
Zigzag Back Thru These States
(1966–1967)
Iron Horse
442 EDWARD CARPENTER: Contemporary, disciple of Whitman, British educator-poet. See “Turin-Paris Express” from his poem book Towards Democracy, 1902, a rare example of successful Whitmanic line.
442 HOMER: Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s late sizable black dog, subject of several popular poems.
443 MULADHARA SPHINCTER: Refers to anal chakra (one of seven bodily centers of spirit energy in Orient yoga practice).
443 SAHASRARAPADMA: Seventh chakra, “thousand-petal lotus” at skulltop.
443 GAVIN ARTHUR: (d. 1972) Bay area astrologer, grandson of U.S. President Chester A. Arthur, had slept with Carpenter, who’d slept with Whitman, according to written testament entrusted to author. See text, Gay Sunshine Interviews, ed. Winston Leyland, vol. 1, San Francisco, 1978, pp. 126–28.
444 MR. CUMMINGS & MR. VINAL: E. E. Cummings wrote much-anthologized poem mocking lesser poet Harold Vinal: “Poem, or Beauty Hurts Mr. Vinal.”
444 SEBSI: Moroccan clay pipe for kif.
446 NA-MU SA-MAN-DA … SO-MO-KO: “Dharani of Removing Disasters,” repeated thrice in temple usage. See D. T. Suzuki, Manual of Zen Buddhism (New York: Grove Press, 1960).
447 WALTER LIPPMANN: (1889–1974) Aging political columnist/philosopher wrote thus in newspapers the week of “Iron Horse” ride.
447 SAM LEWIS: “Sufi Sam”—world traveler, founder of Sufi sect in San Francisco, friend of Gavin Arthur.
447 DR. LOURIA: Leon Louria, Naomi’s boyfriend, “Dr. Isaac” of “Kaddish,” had served as consulting physician for National Maritime Union until purged as left-winger in Senator Joe McCarthy era, early 1950s.
447 FREEHOLD NEW JERSEY: Geyshe Wangyal, first Gelugpa sect Tibetan Buddhist teacher in America, founded his monastery at Freehold in 1950s.
450 GEORGE E. TURNER: Ephemeral Texas journalist (b. 1925) whose acid comments author read on train newspaper.
451 YEVTUSHENKO: Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the then-popular Russian poet, had written an open letter to novelist John Steinbeck questioning his support for U.S. military occupation of South Vietnam.
455 THE WOMAN IN THE RED DRESS: The woman who “informed” on “Public Enemy No. 1,” John Dillinger, leading FBI to the Biograph movie house where he was cornered and shot.
455 PURVIS: FBI agent who organized Dillinger’s fatal ambush.
455 HENRY CROWN: (1896–1990) Chicago business hustler, made early fortune buying municipally owned rock waste and selling it back to Chicago for road construction; later major stockholder and 1959–1966 chairman executive committee, director, of then-number-one military-industrial-complex corporation, General Dynamics.
457 FULBRIGHT: Senator James William Fulbright (1905–1995) Head of Senate Foreign Relations Committee 1959–1974, made eloquent public attack on President Johnson’s expansion of the Vietnam War.
458 SHERI MARTINELLI: American painter and miniaturist, formerly N.Y. fashion model, friend-companion to Ezra Pound at St. Elizabeths Hospital, Washington, D.C., in mid-’50s. An acquaintance of Charlie Parker, she served somewhat as Pound’s connection to the new cultural life in U.S. postwar underground. A tiny book of her portraits, with prefatory note by Pound, was published by Editions Scheiwiller, Milan, 1956.
458 YAJALóN VALLEY: Isolated mountain valley town, Chiapas.
458 XOCHIMILCO: Ancient floating gardens, Mexico City, where Kerouac, Orlovsky and the author met a party of Mexican ballet boys in a sightseeing boat. See Kerouac’s Desolation Angels, Book Two, Part One, section 20.
458 FIJIJIAPAN: town close to Guadalajara, Mexico, notable for its candy.
459 KEDERNATH & BADRINATH & GANGOTRI: Northwest India Hindu pilgrimage sites on the way to Kailash, Shiva’s sacred Tibetan border mountain abode, source of Ganges.
459 MANASAROVAR: Iced lake on Kailash.
450 KARMA: Hindu-Buddhist concept of inevitable interconnection of cause and effect. Karma may be “white” and “black,” wholesome and unwholesome, meritorious or unmeritorious, or neutral, in mixed degrees, according to the activities of Mind, Speech, and Body that initiate karmic momentum and payback. “Black” karma example: As ignorant greed motivates agribusiness to aggressive exploitation of soil, so soil may collapse under assault of chemical poisons, finally become barren, eroded, no longer nourishing its bewildered and inconsiderable stewards. Further example: As American populace is indifferent to military sufferings its government wreaks on distant nations, Indochina to Central America, so will that public heartlessness progressively discourage private trust and adhesiveness between government and populace. On individual scale, a father, careless of his children, may not have faithful helpers on his deathbed.
Such karmic patterns may be altered and their energy made wholesome through meditative mindfulness, conscious awareness, the practice of appreciation, which burns up karma on the spot. Traditionally, attentive appreciation of an enlightened teacher who has transcended his/her own karma may inspire the student/seeker/citizen to work from “black” through “white” situations toward holistic primordial experience, or unconditioned states of mind and activity, exchanging self for others, liberated from karma as may be Mahatma Gandhi or certain Buddhist folk or Native American elders.
461 SRI RAMA NA MAHARSHI: 20th-century South Indian ascetic saint, instructed meditation practice, “Who Am I?” Quotations are from his book Maha Yoga.
464 MANNAHATTA:
Starting from fish-shaped Paumanok where I was born,
Well-begotten, and rais’d by a perfect mother,
After roaming many lands, lover of populous pavements,
Dweller in Mannahatta, my city … (“Starting from Paumanok”)
“Thus Walt Whitman, born in Long Island, paraphrases the old Indian name for New York City. ‘Mannahatta! How fit a name for America’s great democratic island city! The word itself, how beautiful! how aboriginal! how it seems to rise with tall spires glistening in the sunshine, with such New World atmosphere, vista and action!’” (Justin Kaplan, Walt Whitman: A Life [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980] p. 107.)
Sri Ramana Maharshi. Photographer unknown. (See n.p. 461.)
City Midnight Junk Strains
465 FRANK O HARA: (1926–1966) Gay central figure in N.Y. literary art life 1950s till his death; MOMA exhibitions department curator, inspired a whole generation of N.Y. “Personism” poets; died struck by beach buggy, dark midnight accident Fire Island. See “The Day Lady Died,” in his Collected Poems (New York: Knopf, 1972).
465 KLINE: Franz Kline (1910–1962) American abstract expressionist pioneer painter, on whose work Frank O’Hara wrote monograph, died of heart attack.
466 EDWIN DENBY: (1903–1983) China-born, influential dance critic, poet, friend of younger writers of “New York School,” 1960s–1980s; frequented N.Y.C. Ballet and St. Mark’s Poetry Project. (Collected Poems published by Full Court Press, New York, 1975.)
Holy Ghost on the Nod over the Body of Bliss
475 KUAN YIN: Chinese name, Avelokitesvera, compassionate aspect of Buddha. See “Angkor Wat.”
475 SHIVA: Lord energy of creation and destruction, symbolized in Hindu shrines by Shiva lingam or phallus, generally a standing rounded oblong rock covered with flowers and incense.
475 OUROBOROS: Great cosmic snake, tail in mouth completing Einsteinian circle.
475 PARVATI: Shiva’s consort.
475 YOD: Hebrew abbreviation, divine unutterable name.
475 COYOTE: Amerindian trickster-hero god.
475 RAMAKRISHNA: Ecstatic Hindu saint (1836–1886), founder of Vedanta order, entered all religious practices. See The Gospel of Shri Ramakrishna, trans. Swami Nikhilananda (Madras, India: Shri Ramakrishna Math, 1957).
475 BODHIDHARMA: Twenty-eighth Zen patriarch after Sakyamuni in orthodox transmission line, brought Buddism from India to Canton in the West 520 A.D., thus first Chinese patriarch of “Wall-gazing” Chan (Zen) practice; died aged 150 years.
Hui-K’o (486–593) cut off his arm and gave it to Bodhidharma, token of sincerity: “I have no peace of mind … Please pacify it.”
“Bring your mind here.”
“I can’t find it.”
“There, I have pacified your mind.”
An Open Window on Chicago
481 BOUFFANT ROOTS: Upswept hairstyle, with undyed roots growing visible.
482 DAKINI: Buddhist sky goddess, conveyor of insight.
Wales Visitation
488 VISITACIONE: Ancient bardic visiting round in Wales.
488 LLANTHONY VALLEY: Pastoral vale, Welsh Black Mountains.
490 CAPEL-Y-FFN: Ancient ruined chapel at green bottom of Llanthony Valley. Eric Gill, type-font designer and craftsman, dwelt there 1920s with arts commune.
490 LORD HEREFORD S KNOB: Mountain walling north side Llanthony Valley.
490 (LSD): First draft main body of poem was written in fifth hour LSD-inspired afternoon.
Pentagon Exorcism
491 EXORCISM: Gary Snyder’s 1967 Bay Area broadside, A Curse Against the Men in Pentagon, Washington, helped initiate flower-power era mass peace-protest “Levitation” of Pentagon, the demystification of its authority. See Norman Mailer’s extensive account in Armies of the Night (New York: New American Library, 1971 reprint).
491 DIAPHANOID: From title of science fiction movie the author saw 1967 at S. Gemignano while traveling from Florence to Milan.
491 WESTMORELAND: General William C. Westmoreland (b. 1914) “Hawk” commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam 1964–1968, who, not realizing that the majority of Vietnamese didn’t welcome American/Catholic domination of South Vietnam as part of China-containment policy, urged escalation of war, all-out victory by any means, including nuclear.
491 USURY: Allusion to Ezra Pound’s monetarist theory: that banks’ usurous (fast buck high interest) abuse of credit as a commodity, for speculative moneymaking rather than productive ends, cankers the entire economic system of the West. See the Cantos of Ezra Pound, “Canto XLV” (New York: New Directions, 1970): “With Usura the line grows thick.”
491 MCDONNELL DOUGLAS TO GENERAL DYNAMICS: These corporations were chief military contractees to Pentagon, 1967.
491 APOKATASTASIS: Event wherein ignorant or “satanic” energy is transformed instantaneously to divine wisdom light, as might be at end of Kali Yuga.
491 RAKSA: Tibetan mantra to purify site for a ceremony, from Hevajra Tantra. Raksa is an energy daemon.
491 PEKING: At time of composition, diplomatic nonrecognition of existence of People’s Republic of China was an obsession central to U.S. anti-red cold war monolithic “containment policy” strong-armed politically by “China Lobby,” including then ex-Vice-President Richard Nixon.
Elegy Che Guevara
492 RUSK: Secretary of State Dean Rusk (1909–1994) President Johnson’s hawkish diplomatic executive for Vietnam War.
493 NORRIS: Frank Norris (1876–1902) Novelist, author of naturalist novel The Pit, drama of frenzied Chicago grain market.
493 OBSERVERS’ BALCONY: “Street theater action” initiated 1968 by Abbie Hoffman at New York Stock Exchange, throwing a bag of dollars on the exchange floor as war protest. Thenceforth balcony was walled with glass.
Elegies for Neal Cassady
(1968)
Elegy for Neal Cassady
496 SHABDA: (Sanskrit) Sound or vibration, a path of yoga.
496 GREAT YEAR: 24,000-year cycle of the sun, which rises for 2,000 years each through 12 zodiacal constellations, as it wobbles almost imperceptibly on its sidereal axis; presently entering Age of Aquarius.
497 HEJIRA: Mohammed’s flight from Mecca, A.D. 622; Kesey’s bus trip, A.D. 1964, Neal Cassady at driver’s wheel.
497 LOWELL: Massachusetts Merrimack River redbrick mill town where Jack Kerouac was raised, site of many novels.
Ecologues of These States
(1969–1971)
Over Denver Again
519 ALLEYWAY LILA: Lila (Sanskrit), “play,” as in Krishna’s play on earth, “Krishna Lila.”
Falling Asleep in America
525 BEULAH: Blake term for mythic realm of subconscious, source of dream-poetic inspiration.
Northwest Passage
526 JOHNSON BUTTE: High mountain plateau overlooking Lake Wallula at confluence of Snake and Columbia rivers. Horse Heaven Hills top the vast butte.
526 SAKAJAWEA: Indian lady guide for Lewis and Clark expedition through Northwest native territory hitherto unknown by white men.
526 THALASSA: (Greek) Sea.
527 SIRHAN: Sirhan J. Sirhan, young Palestine-born assassin of Robert F. Kennedy, Los Angeles 1968. His comments on conviction, and description of his visage, were taken from Associated Press reports.
527 52% PEOPLE: Refers to 1968 Gallup poll.
527 SDS: Radical activist Students for a Democratic Society, whose early 1960s “Port Huron Declaration” proposed patriotic reform of institutionalized race prejudice and abusive imperial exploitation of nature and human labor. SDS rose as an alternative to the relatively passive “establishment” National Students Association, which had absorbed much natural student energy but was revealed during mid-1960s Senate investigation to have been funded by the CIA as a front for covert propaganda activity and an illegal domestic training ground for agents. SDS was later infiltrated and sabotaged covertly by the FBI, whose “cointel” (counterintelligence) policy was blueprinted to create leadership dissension and split white student youth from alliance with black activist groups. SDS fragmented in early 1970s, having helped spearhead early civil rights struggle in South and later extreme student opposition to U.S. military invasion of Indochina.
528 MIRA BAI: 14th-century Indian poetess, ecstatic Krishna worshiper. Her sacred devotional songs are still sung in villages and cities of India.
Sonora Desert-Edge
530 DRUM H.: Arizona poet Drummond Hadley (student of Charles Olson, friend of Gary Snyder), from whom author first heard Padmasambhava mantra.
530 TARTHANG TULKU: N’yingma-pa lineage Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Berkeley friend of Gary Snyder, taught the millennial Padmasambhava mantra quoted: “Body, Speech, Mind, Lotus-Flower-Power Diamond-Teacher, Hum.”
530 SAGUARO … OCOTILLO … CHOLLA … PALO VERDE: Varieties of cacti.
Memory Gardens
539 MEMORY GARDENS: Cemetery near Albany Airport glimpsed on way to Jack Kerouac’s funeral in Lowell, Mass. Poem was written on that trip.
540 HAL: Hal Chase, Denver-bred contemporary and friend of Cassady and Kerouac, later boat and lute builder in Bolinas, California, 1960s.
541 JOHN HOLMES: John Clellon Holmes (1926–1988) Author of first published (1952) Beat romance, Go (New York: New American Library, 1980).
Graffiti 12th Cubicle Men’s Room Syracuse Airport
543 LSD: Formula for lysergide written on the john wall differs from that given in Dorland’s Medical Dictionary (1981): C20H25 N3O.
Friday the Thirteenth
546 FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH: Allusion to date of explosion in town house West 11th Street, New York. While parents were on vacation, it was used as safe-house bomb factory by “Weathermen.”
546 HAMPTON, KING, GOLD: Fred Hampton, Chicago Black Panther murdered in bed by police with FBI collaboration, 1968. Martin Luther King, assassinated in Memphis, April 5, 1968. Theodore Gold, killed in Weathermen blast (see note above).
546 SONG-MY: V
ietnamese village blasted and burned by U.S. forces “to save it from the Viet Cong.”
546 TU-DO: Main Saigon hotel-café street during U.S. occupation.
Ecologue
550 MAHANIRVANA & HEVAJRA TANTRAS: Buddhist Vajrayana texts used by advanced meditation practitioners.
552 JOHN SINCLAIR: Poet, pioneer Detroit publisher, jazz critic, leader of Ann Arbor “White Panthers.” Arrested 1969 for giving two marijuana joints to police spies in his Artists Workshop interracial poet-musicians’ enterprise, he was sentenced to 9½–10 years jail, and liberated by state legislation the weekend after John Lennon-Yoko Ono’s “Free John Sinclair” concert, Ann Arbor, 1972. This libertarian protest provoked unsuccessful Nixon administration deportation proceedings against Lennon.
553 QUECHUA: The Quechua Indian city Macchu Picchu is located in Huilca Bamba valley.
553 DMT: Dimethyltryptamine, a short-lived “high,” psychedelic drug related to traditional Peruvian intoxicant Huilca. The chemical was later described by an early experimenter, Dr. Oscar Janiger, as “most powerful of all hallucinogenic agents.” DMT use has not yet been experimentally discerned in a cultural climate (1970s–1980s) discouraging to this area of scientific investigation.
555 GOODMAN, CHANEY, SCHWERNER: N.Y. Jewish boys and a Southern black were murdered together while traveling in Mississippi, 1964, to aid black civil rights campaign.