The Best Minds of My Generation: A Literary History of the Beats
Page 31
Wanting to give it new meaning my meaning
I drop my unusual head dumb to the true joy of being good
Then he looks back to all the power guys of his youth in the Mafia when he was growing up in Greenwich Village. All the dumb Italians that were beating everybody up and telling him he was a freaky poet and [that] they had good jobs. He’s looking at it from the perspective of having become a big international celebrity poet genius, and realizing the pathos of all those left behind, who either get drafted to go to some imaginary war or wind up lesser men in the factories of the universe.
And I wonder myself now powerless
Staggering back to the feeble boys of my youth
Are they now lesser men in the factories of universe
Are they there compressing the air
Pumping their bully profanities through long leafy tubes
I see them perched high on the shelves of God
Outpecking this offered hemisphere like a crumb —
O God! what uttered curse ushers me to them
Like a prisoner of war . . .
Be those ominous creaks of eternity their sad march?
How powerless I am in playgrounds
Swings like witches woosh about me
Sliding ponds like dinosaur tongues down to my unusual feet
To have me walk in the street would be both unusual
Another of those weird mind-blowing ideas from smoking grass. Grammatically an impossible statement, except it sounds logical here. Ferlinghetti didn’t want to print this in Gasoline because he thought it had something to do with fascist power, so Gregory quit writing the poem in 1956. He completed it in Amsterdam two years later. The opening line of the 1958 continuation is:
Power is still with me! Who got me hung on Power?
So what is he going to do with it now? Of course he’s grown as a poet and he’s gotten much more imaginative and funny, far out.
Am I stuffed in the grizzly maw of Power’s hopped-up wheel
Will I always be like this head in legs out
Like one of Ulysses’ men in the mouth of Polyphemus
[Reference to the] myth in the Odyssey about Polyphemus the one-eyed Titan, a Cyclops. He was the guy in the cave who had captured all of Odysseus’s men and Odysseus blinded Polyphemus and got his men out by making them cling to the bellies of sheep while Polyphemus felt the sheeps’ backs. It’s from a painting by Goya, a really mean image. There is one of Polyphemus eating Odysseus’s men and the feet are coming out of his mouth.
Am I the Power drag? Me the Power head?
Just what Power am I for anyway!
Here Gregory has the chance to demonstrate his poetic power by a series of word combinations that are mind-blowing by themselves.
The seized bee in a blaze of honey Power —
The spider in the center of its polar veil
With a fly-from-another-world Power —
That’s from the movie The Fly, I guess.
Good noon nap on adoration lap with all cozy cruelty Power—
Towering melt like an avalanche of glass never ending chirring Power—
Stooped and hushed Chronicleleer of Spenserian gauderies
Is surely maybe my Power—
Whenever I play the fiery lyre with cold-fingered minstrelry
A luscious Power gives me a heavened consequence good as sunlight—
This is pretty good. He’s playing the fiery lyre now. The cold-fingered minstrel, the deliberate, cold, calculating combination of words. Words that are both unusual. Now he’s going to do a climactic credenza of pure improvisation of powerful contradictory impossible poetical diamond-like images. Really odd phrasing, a heavened consequence. A heavenly consequence becomes a heavened consequence.
Awful blank acreage once made pastoral by myths
Now abandoned to mankind’s honest yet hopeless
Anthemion-elixir is in need of my Power —
One of the interesting things about Corso is all those odd Greek names, the name for Mercury’s sandals [talaria] and things like anthemion.196 I forgot what anthemion is, it’s a Greek god that did something awful, like fuck up the city for some money. He’s in need of my power. He’s very good at Greek mythology. “Awful blank acreage once made pastoral by myths,” New York City, or he might be talking about the Plaka.197 Boiled down, it is that the modern civilization chewing up the earth is in need of his power. Also “blank acreage,” that’s the parking lots. At one time the poets celebrated the pastoral quality of the field, which is now turned into a parking lot.
But the Power I have I built with my own help!
That bad wolf approach in dim-divine disguise Power
All mine! All illumination sheep Power!
That woodsy savant fetch-eyed scarce perspective from
Balm-volumed epics that prouds shy fantasy my Power!
You can try to sit down and figure out every one of these lines. This one, “that woodsy savant,” is a wise hermit in the woods, or a witch or a warlock. “Fetch-eyed,” usually used for a woman in a pastoral painting where she’s saying “come along with me.” I don’t know why he’s using “scarce perspective” except that he’s talking about painting her probably. “Balm-volumed epics,” volumes which are like balm in Gilead, [which is] a line of Poe. “Is there balm in Gilead?” That is a question that the gallant knight asks in one of Poe’s mysterious little poems. Is there any honey in heaven? Volumes of epics are in themselves balm for Gregory.
That hand-grenade humor dropped down the hatch
Of an armoured suit my proposed bit come doomsday Power!
That’s actually quite a good definition of his method. “That hand-grenade humor dropped down the hatch of an armoured suit.” That’s very funny, straight out of comics, like a Disney cartoon or Tom and Jerry.
O joy to my human sparkle Power!
Joy to its march down the street!
Ha! The envy of diamonds in the windows!
The child of Power is laughter!
Having stated and demonstrated his power, the last statement is a mellow, violin cadenza of eternity. Coda.
October you fat month of gloom and poetry
It’s no longer your melodious graveyard air
Your night-yanked cypresses
Your lovely dead moon
It is October of me! My Power!
Alive with a joy a sparkle a laugh
That drops my woe and all woe to the floor
Like a shot spy198
That last line, “like a shot spy,” is real sharp, witty, absolutely sparkling. It echoes the very beginning of the poem, “I am the ambassador of power.” Constant improvisation, a constant discordant or exuberant human sparkle, line by line. Every line some funny twist, either of syntax or language or shortcut or cartoon archetype image like the “hand-grenade humor dropped down the hatch of an armoured suit.”
It’s beautiful. Every one of these images is reminiscent of something. If you pay attention to the twists and turns of his mind as he completed these little puzzles, you can do it with words, and you can also do it with ideas. He’s great as a poet of ideas, like archetypal ideas, setting them out in a remarkable way that hadn’t been said before but had been thought.
“Power is underpowered,” meaning anybody that thirsts for power is drinking sand. Anybody that wants power can’t have it, in the sense that they’re a prey to their desire. So there’s no power there. It’s like somebody trying too hard to get laid, they can’t make it because they’re so anxious, that the actual lovemaking is displaced by self-conscious anxiety and ambition. There’s no power when there’s ambitious and greedy grasping.
CHAPTER 38
Corso and Herald of the Autochthonic Spirit
A more recent poem [is] called “The Whole Mess . . . A
lmost,” which is one of the supreme poems of the half century in terms of its thought and what it’s got to say.
The Whole Mess . . . Almost
I ran up six flights of stairs
to my small furnished room
opened the window
and began throwing out
those things most important in life
That’s a great opening for a poem. He’s proposing the poem to give you an itemization of what’s truly important, but he has to set it dramatically in a poem in a witty way that isn’t corny. Here’s what the most important things are, [stated] in this totally simple way. It gives his whole situation, he lives in a furnished room up six flights. He states his nature, his relation to property, to morals, to ethics, to life itself, and then he begins throwing out those things most important in life.
First to go, Truth, squealing like a fink:
“Don’t! I’ll tell awful things about you!”
“Oh yeah? Well, I’ve nothing to hide . . . OUT!”
Among all poets he’s the most maudit, French for the damned poet, or the poet who’s got a bad reputation. The two greatest lyric poets of France, Villon and Rimbaud, are both considered poètes maudits. I say van Gogh would be a painter maudit.
Then went God, glowering & whimpering in amazement:
“It’s not my fault! I’m not the cause of it all!” “OUT!”
Then Love, cooing bribes: “You’ll never know impotency!
All the girls on Vogue covers, all yours!”
I pushed her fat ass out and screamed:
“You always end up a bummer!”
I picked up Faith Hope Charity
all three clinging together:
“Without us you’ll surely die!”
“With you I’m going nuts! Goodbye!”
Then Beauty . . . ah, Beauty—
As I led her to the window
I told her: “You I loved best in life
. . . but you’re a killer; Beauty kills!”
Not really meaning to drop her
I immediately ran downstairs
getting there just in time to catch her
With words Gregory has accomplished what they do in cartoons. It’s amazing, the trickery of that, and the simplicity, because he’s got mouthfuls of gibberish in “Power,” intelligent gibberish or sensitive combination, but he can also not really mean to drop her. It is the creation of a kind of miracle simile. I don’t know another poet who does that. Just totally straight, clear, simple, almost monosyllabic words.
“You saved me!” she cried
I put her down and told her: “Move on.”
So what else has he got to eliminate? It’s the distillation of a lot of the wisdom put into street-smart language. He’s dealt with truth, god, love, hate, hope, beauty, so it’s actually very interesting. He’s taken what he would call the biggies, the big themes, and dealt with them in one or two lines each. Appreciation, but nonattachment, not getting addicted.
Went back up those six flights
went to the money
there was no money to throw out.
The only thing left in the room was Death
Now he’s going to tackle death.
hiding beneath the kitchen sink:
“I’m not real!” It cried
“I’m just a rumor spread by life . . .”
One of Gregory’s favorite cocktail party tricks was to go up to someone and say, “I’m never going to die!” Of course you’re going to die, but he’d say, “I’m never going to die, because I’ll never know it, I’m not going to be there, so I’m not going to die.” Very literal people wouldn’t understand the level he was talking at. “Of course you’re going to die, everybody dies.” And Gregory would keep baiting them. “I’m not going to be there, I don’t even know about death, don’t tell me about death, I don’t know anything about it.” So this is a little boiled-down version of his routine.
Laughing I threw it out, kitchen sink and all
and suddenly realized Humor
was all that was left—
All I could do with Humor was to say:
“Out the window with the window!”199
That’s a brilliant touch. Out the frame of reference with the frame of reference. Out the conception with the conception. That’s like the supreme Zen, one hand clapping, out the window with the window. So the image eliminates itself finally. Conception eliminates conceptualization. The mind erases itself.
CHAPTER 39
Ginsberg’s Early Writings
In 1948 Jack Kerouac’s first book, The Town and the City, was published. I read the manuscript and I was amazed that any of us had actually accomplished a work of art. It was the first time anybody that I knew had done anything that looked like a professional novel. It hadn’t occurred to me that we would grow up and do things that were as real as what you read about in the New York Times. I was so amazed that I wrote a sonnet after reading Kerouac’s manuscript. It refers to the general social scene that we were living in then.
[from Two Sonnets]
I dwelled in Hell on earth to write this rhyme,
I live in stillness now, in living flame;
I witness Heaven in unholy time,
I room in the renowned city, am
Unknown. The fame I dwell in is not mine,
I would not have it. Angels in the air
Serenade my senses in delight.
Intelligence of poets, saints and fair
Characters converse with me all night.
But all the streets are burning everywhere.
The city is burning these multitudes that climb
Her buildings. Their inferno is the same
I scaled as a stupendous blazing stair.
They vanish as I look into the light.
I’m unknown, I dwell in a famous megalopolis, but none of it is mine. I wouldn’t have it in those terms, because right now I have a better deal. Angels in air serenade my senses in delight, which is to say Symphony Sid on the radio, playing early bebop, and intelligence of poets, saints, and fair characters conversed with me all night. Quite literally I was hanging around with Neal Cassady and Kerouac and going downtown to Times Square and talking with Herbert Huncke all night long at Bickford’s. “But all the streets are burning everywhere.” I took that from T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, where he’s on a dead patrol in the middle of the night in the fog during an air raid in London. Their inferno is the same. There was a thing called “The Fire Sermon” in T. S. Eliot, “burning burning burning burning | To Carthage then I came | where a cauldron of unholy love boiled about my ears.” I was just saying the city is burning, however, the fire for me was like a visionary experience. All the mortals were vanishing as I look into the great rows of paradise. “They vanish as I look into the light.” I got inspired by the fact that Kerouac’s work seemed to be immortal, so I began comparing his immortality to the mortality of the city itself. And so I wrote a little mock sonnet.
[from Two Sonnets]
Woe unto thee Manhattan
Woe unto thee, Manhattan, woe to thee,
Woe unto all the cities of the world.
Repent, Chicagos, O repent; ah, me!
Los Angeles, now thou art gone so wild,
I think thou art still mighty, yet shall be,
As the earth shook, and San Francisco fell,
An angel in an agony of flame.
City of horrors, New York so much like Hell,
How soon thou shalt be city-without-name,
A tomb of souls, and a poor broken knell.
Fire and fire on London, Moscow shall die,
And Paris her livid atomies be rolled
Together into the Woe of the blazing bell—
All cities then shall toll for th
eir great fame.200
It was like a little atomic bomb sonnet. These sonnets are more or less the kind of poetry I was writing at the time, mainly influenced by Sir Thomas Wyatt, John Donne, Andrew Marvell, and metaphysical poetry, which was the vogue at the time. The following poem is a parody of Marvell’s “The Garden” and was dedicated to Neal Cassady, but I changed the sex of the reference.
A Lover’s Garden
How vainly lovers marvel, all
To make a body, mind, and soul,
Who, winning one white night of grace,
Will weep and rage a year of days,
Or muse forever on a kiss,
If won by a more sad mistress—
Are all these lovers, then, undone
By him and me, who love alone?
O, have the virtues of the mind
Been all for this one love designed?
As seconds on the clock do move,
Each marks another thought of love;
Thought follows thought, and we devise
Each minute to antithesize,
Till, as the hour chimes its tune,
Dialectic, we commune.
The argument our minds create
We do, abed, substantiate;
Nor we disdain, in our delight,
To flatter the old Stagirite201:
For in one speedy moment, we
Endure the whole Eternity,
And in our darkened shapes have found
The greater world that we surround.
In this community, the soul
Doth make its act impersonal,
As, locked in a mechanic bliss,
It shudders into nothingness—
Three characters of each may die
To dramatize that Unity.
Timed, placed, and acting thus, the while,
We sit and sing, and sing and smile.
What life is this? What pleasure mine!
Such as no image can insign:
Nor sweet music, understood,
Soft at night, in solitude
At a window, will enwreathe
Such stillness on my brow: I breathe,