The Best Minds of My Generation: A Literary History of the Beats

by Allen Ginsberg

  “The Last Warmth of Arnold.” Arnold is a form of Corso or some Lower East Side jerk. Gregory identifies himself with the warthog, with the ugly, with the rejected, with the prisoner, with the criminal, with the worst, with what would be put down, with what would be rejected, with the rejected and canceled passage. He puts the romance into the loser, to Arnold as the loser. It’s a self-portrait.

  The Last Warmth of Arnold

  Arnold, warm with God,

  hides beneath the porch

  remembering the time of escape, imprisoned in Vermont,

  shoveling snow. Arnold was from somewhere else,

  where it was warm; where he wore suede shoes

  and played ping-pong.

  Arnold knew the Koran.

  And he knew to sing:

  Young Julien Sorel

  Knew his Latin well

  And was wise as he

  Was beautiful

  Until his head fell.

  You know Julian Sorel, the hero of The Red and the Black [by] Stendhal?

  In the empty atmosphere

  Arnold kept a tiplet pigeon, a bag of chicken corn.

  He thought of Eleanor, her hands;

  watched her sit sad in school

  He got Carmine to lure her into the warm atmosphere;

  he wanted to kiss her, live with her forever;

  break her head with bargains.

  Who is Arnold? Well,

  I first saw him wear a black cap

  covered with old Wilkie buttons. He was 13.

  And afraid. But with a smile. And he was always

  willing to walk you home, to meet your mother,

  to tell her about Hester Street Park

  about the cold bums there;

  about the cold old Jewish ladies who sat,

  hands folded, sad, keeping their faces

  away from the old Jewish Home.

  Arnold grew up with a knowledge of bookies

  and chicken pluckers

  And Arnold knew to sing:

  Dead now my 15th year

  F.D.R., whose smiling face

  Made evil the buck-toothed Imperialist,

  The moustached Aryan,

  The jut-jawed Caesar—

  Dead now, and I weep . . .

  For once I did hate that man

  and no reason

  but innocent hate

  —my cap decked with old Wilkie buttons.

  [Wendell] Willkie ran against Roosevelt in 1940.

  Arnold was kicked in the balls

  by an Italian girl who got mad

  because there was a big coal strike on

  and it forced the Educational Alliance to close its doors.

  Arnold, weak and dying, stole pennies from the library,

  but he also read about Paderewski.

  He used to walk along South Street

  wondering about the various kinds of glue.

  And it was about airplane glue he was thinking

  when he fell and died beneath the Brooklyn Bridge.183

  That was Kerouac’s favorite line in Corso’s earlier work. “He used to walk along South Street wondering about the various kinds of glue.” That’s a very funny line, it’s so totally literal. Totally unliterary, unpretty line, but also realistic. It’s nonsensical, but that’s exactly what people do wonder about. Like somebody walking down South Street would be wondering about various kinds of glue, why not? Hot glue, paste glue, thinking about glue, people do think about glue. It’s so completely surrealist and at the same time totally realistic that it’s mind-blowing. Corso’s genius is in isolating these literalities which are simultaneously surrealist.

  “Arnold was kicked in the balls by an Italian girl who got mad because there’s a big coal strike on and the Educational Alliance was closed again.” I think that was the original form of the line. That was my favorite line because it was so mysterious, meaningless, and at the same time completely coherent and completely nonsensical. Apparently it’s just a little piece of real life history, he’d made a date for this youth club, the Educational Alliance, and planned to have a little rendezvous. And then there was a coal strike, it was closed, and the girl got mad and kicked him. That’s just a piece of history so absurd that when you reduce it to its abstract notation, warthog reality, [it becomes] beauty. Very funny actually.

  There’s another element in Corso that begins to emerge, his ability to take archetypal situations or feelings or emotions and humorously parade them forth extending them out with his imagination until it becomes a recognizably familiar poeticism, as in a poem called “Hello,” to be read in a kind of weak voice.

  Hello

  It is disastrous to be a wounded deer.

  I’m the most wounded, wolves stalk,

  and I have my failures, too.

  My flesh is caught on the Inevitable Hook!

  As a child I saw many things I did not want to be.

  Am I the person I did not want to be?

  That talks-to-himself person?

  That neighbors-make-fun-of person?

  Am I he who, on museum steps, sleeps on his side?

  Do I wear the cloth of a man who has failed?

  Am I the looney man?

  In the great serenade of things,

  am I the most cancelled passage?184

  Each one of those is a thought that everyone has had about himself at one time or other, or a fear of himself of being the man to wear the cloth of the man who’s failed, who sleeps on his side on the museum steps, a Bowery bum. And a kind of humor, willing to start a poem with the idea of “hello.” I don’t think any other poet has that much obvious mindfulness of the quirks of everyday goofiness. And along with the everyday goofiness is a recognition of everyday miracles, which become amazing contradictory realities, like “Last night I drove a car.” It is one of a series of very realistic poems that might have come out of William Carlos Williams’s ordinary mind rhetoric.

  Last Night I Drove a Car

  Last night I drove a car

  not knowing how to drive

  not owning a car

  I drove and knocked down

  people I loved

  . . . went 120 through one town.

  I stopped at Hedgeville

  and slept in the back seat

  . . . excited about my new life.185

  It’s a marijuana thought. I remember we were smoking a lot of marijuana when he wrote that and I remember hearing it read high on grass for the first time. Just the idea “I stopped at Hedge­ville . . . excited about my new life” is the kind of feeling that you would have a dream about and he’s notated it very succinctly.

  My own favorites in this book are three or four very brief poems. Corso’s attitude toward people, women, and his own loves is very realistic for that age, “On the Walls of a Dull Furnished Room.”

  On the Walls of a Dull Furnished Room

  I hang old photos of my childhood girls—

  with breaking heart I sit, elbow on table,

  Chin on hand, studying

  the proud eyes of Helen,

  the weak mouth of Jane,

  the golden hair of Susan.186

  That’s another of those archetypal self-images of the poet looking at his old girlfriends. That weak mouth of Jane set between the proud eyes of Helen and the golden hair of Susan, most people wouldn’t think of that. It is unexpected, and real, realistic.

  Then “Italian Extravaganza,” which is a takeoff on a poem by William Carlos Williams, “The Dead Baby.” “Sweep under the bed, the baby is dead” it begins, which was Gregory’s particular connection with Williams’s imagery. “Italian Extravaganza,” remembering that he was born above a funeral home on Bleecker and Macdougal.

 
; Italian Extravaganza

  Mrs. Lombardi’s month-old son is dead.

  I saw it in Rizzo’s funeral parlor,

  A small purplish wrinkled head.

  They’ve just finished having high mass for it;

  They’re coming out now

  . . . wow, such a small coffin!

  And ten black cadillacs to haul it in.187

  It’s like a haiku. All totally realistic and naturalistic in style. Then the same detail of naturalism, realistic detail, applied in a surrealist way in “Birthplace Revisited.” Remembering that Gregory’s been out of New York, been to jail, been to Paris, been to San Francisco, been poet, been fucked by poets, and making it with poets, and making it with weak Jane mouths and golden hair Susans in Cambridges and now returning to Greenwich Village.

  Birthplace Revisited

  I stand in the dark light in the dark street

  and look up at my window, I was born there.

  The lights are on; other people are moving about.

  I am with raincoat; cigarette in mouth,

  hat over eye, hand on gat.

  Gat, gun. You know, from Hollywood, from Edward G. Robinson. “Watch out, he’s got a gat!”

  I cross the street and enter the building.

  In a sense he’s coming on in the role of a torpedo, a hit man, revisiting his birthplace. It’s an Italian neighborhood and there were mafiosi around him. He actually did know all the local hoods and bosses.

  The garbage cans haven’t stopped smelling.

  I walk up the first flight; Dirty Ears

  aims a knife at me . . .

  I pump him full of lost watches.188

  There his mind leaps, “I pump him full of lost watches.” That’s a genius touch. He’s remembering Dirty Ears, an old childhood enemy, attacking him in that same smelly garbage can stairway, but now he’s going back and realizing the patheticness of Dirty Ears after two or three decades, so he’s pumping him with lost time. The time’s transshifted, and Corso’s alive and Dirty Ears may be in jail or dead or who knows? But by recollection, insight, memory, nostalgia, compassion, and poetic imagination, he’s summoned up Dirty Ears. He’s no longer afraid because he can pump him full of poetry, lost watches. In other words, Gregory has his weapon, his imagination, which is above and beyond Dirty Ears’s knife. When that was first written, I didn’t understand what that meant, and when this book first came out everybody said, “What does he mean by lost watches, or fried shoes, or those funny combinations?” It’s so perfect a metaphor for lost time, time gone by.

  Then “The Last Gangster,” which is the best of these surrealistical-imaged time transshifting tiny poems.

  The Last Gangster

  Waiting by the window

  my feet enwrapped with the dead bootleggers of Chicago

  I am the last gangster, safe, at last,

  waiting by a bullet-proof window.

  I look down the street and know

  the two torpedoes from St. Louis.

  I’ve watched them grow old

  . . . guns rusting in their arthritic hands.189

  It’s like the “lost watches,” such a very precise realistic image using naturalistic forms to make a magical ellipse of time. Corso’s method of writing involved an element of discord, or disharmony, or contradiction from image to image or from word to word. The next composition in his mind contradicted the previous composition. One phrase following another phrase that would completely disrupt the thinking process of the reader and disrupt the poet’s composition process and create some kind of a weird mind warp or gap or temporary apocalypse inside the brain.

  An example was when interviewed in the late 1950s by Time magazine and asked, “What is poetry?” Corso said, “Fried shoes!” At the time that was considered to be a weird statement, but it was just a very logical sensible example of an image that he considered poetic, fried shoes, or pipe butter, radiator soup, penguin dust.

  CHAPTER 35

  Corso and The Happy Birthday of Death

  From 1956 on Corso began a whole series of poems with single-word titles. [Each] took a very simple idea like marriage, or bomb, or death, or clown, or hair, or police, or army, or food and wrought all the changes possible that could be applied to each central theme word, still making use of that notion of contradiction. This included a poem called “Discord,” which explains his poetic method.

  Discord

  Oh I would like to break my teeth

  by means of expressing a radiator!

  I say I must dent that which gives heat!

  Dent! regardless the tradition of my mouth.

  It’s a direct expression of his method again, as before he laid out his aesthetic in “I wanted to drop fire-engines out of my mouth.” Here he would like to “break my teeth by means of expressing a radiator!,” whatever that means. The title is “Discord,” which is his method, not to make beauty out of some corny logical harmony but to make beauty out of a contradiction, like fried shoes.

  I would like to drive a car

  but I must drive it!

  Look—there must be a firing squad, yes,

  buy why a wolf?

  I mean if I pass by with a rainball ball

  should I pass by with a jackinthebox instead?

  Confused I’d best leave wonder and candy and school

  and go find amid ruin the peremptory corsair.

  Sober

  Wier Moors furs tails deer paws

  risked and fevered thinking

  owls in flashlight.190

  What does all that mean? To begin with he’s theorizing the terms of his speech, like dropping a fire engine out of his mouth. A kind of literal joke-surprise, “break my teeth by means of expressing a radiator.” So a surrealist mixture of word combinations. As he opens his mouth he expresses a radiator or a fire engine drops out. It’s like a surrealist thing where you take one object and put it juxtaposed inside of another, like a mouth, where they don’t belong, but they make sense, they actually make sense. “By means of expressing it” is a funny way of putting it. It’s sort of Italian American double talk. Then he takes on a kind of rhetorical, traditional tone. “I say I must dent,” that would make sense in some traditional context. But then what does he say? “Dent that which gives heat,” which within itself is an odd idea, to dent that which gives heat. It’s abstract, funny syntax. “Regardless the tradition of my mouth.” Not regardless of the tradition of my mouth, but “regardless the tradition of my mouth.” He tailored the line down. That’s his word, “tailoring.” He cut out possessive articles, cut out as many commas as possible, cut out anything extra, and just kept to the nub or most exact, pointed, sharp, fast, funny way of saying the idea he has in mind. His poems are made up of ideas in a way that other people’s poems aren’t.

  It’s an idea to have a theory of poetry which would be discordant, it’s an idea to have an example of that discordance be the sound of a fire engine, the loudness of a fire engine coming out of the mouth. It’s an idea that is expressed by saying, “I drop a fire-engine out of my mouth,” or an idea to express heated language by means of a radiator, breaking his teeth on a radiator. Only a true artist would offer to break his teeth on a radiator.

  I think discord came out of his own head, his own early intuition into poetry. His idea is one idea following another by association visually but contradicting and going off in different directions, just for the playfulness or the weirdness of it. It ends up with an abstract painting of words that exemplify the essence of the essential point he’s making. The point he’s making is that through discord and contradiction he can arrive at literal beauty. It’s a flat, straightforward picture. These little sparks of discord, like flint against iron, are theorized as little glimpses of poetic wisdom.

  Then there’s another exercise that he did, which is pretty
well known, on the subject of pure invention. The point where he passes from some kind of logical sense into totally nonlogical sense is a middle point, before he gets completely crazy. “Look there must be a firing squad, yes.” Well, whoever said there must be a firing squad? Because there must be a firing squad, sure, life has a firing squad, okay, so look, there must be a firing squad, yes, but why a wolf? Well, he’s substituted one scare for another, the wolf for the firing squad. And why is it a wolf? Well, if you can accept that there should be a firing squad on earth, then how come he’s asking why there should be a wolf? It doesn’t make sense, he’s just kidding you. And he continues kidding you. “I mean if I pass by with a rainball ball, should I pass by with a jack in the box instead?” Or if I invent a rainball ball, if I invent the conception, is there something so illogical about that that you prefer I come along with a jack-in-the-box instead? He’s talking about his poetic method and being very courteous, having a conversation with you about how he’s going about it. Finally says, “Confused”? If you’re going to deny his methods, he’d best leave all the early childlike apprehensions like wonder and candy and school and go find amid ruin, what? The “peremptory corsair,” some immediately demanding pirate. Finally it ends with a little collage of exquisite essence of weir, which he also caps by “owls in flashlight,” little flashes of wisdom. It makes some funny kind of sense. It’s a progression from the beginning of the idea of discord, it’s a progression in images, a continuing, it’s a sequence of ideas following from the first one, almost logical.

  In Happy Birthday of Death is a relatively well-known poem called “Poets Hitchhiking on the Highway.” The actual situation was me and Gregory hitchhiking down around Big Sur in 1956, going to visit Henry Miller and not being able to get a ride. We were stuck on the highway, and conversing, talking about discord, talking about his method of composition. I finally got the idea that he was just fooling around, using contradiction as the method, basically trying to tease the reader’s mind. It has some function if you need a practical function for that kind of beauty.