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

by Allen Ginsberg

  And walk on earth, and act my will,

  And cry Peace! Peace! and all is still.

  Though here, it seems, I must remain,

  My thoughtless world, whereon men strain

  Through lives of motion without sense,

  Farewell! in this benevolence—

  That all men may, as I, arrange

  A love as simple, sweet, and strange

  As few men know; nor can I tell,

  But only imitate farewell.202

  Those of you who have read a little bit of classic English poetry will know Marvell’s “The Garden” and I did a little paraphrase of Donne and a little bit of paraphrase of “Come Live with Me and Be My Love.” Then I had an actual visionary experience, so I tried to encase the insight of that in the same kind of rhymed hermetic esoteric metaphysical poetry. I wrote a couple enigmatic poems that aren’t necessarily understandable, in fact they’re probably incomprehensible at this point, but that is what I was doing. Basically this shows where I came from and what I got out of. “The Eye Altering Alters All,” a little epigram from Blake.

  The Eye Altering Alters All

  Many seek and never see,

  anyone can tell them why.

  O they weep and O they cry

  and never take until they try

  unless they try it in their sleep

  and never some until they die.

  I ask many, they ask me.

  This is a great mystery.203

  This was serious because if I were looking at it now I would say that this has a kind of extraordinary rhetorical power, although it’s very confused. I would have to say this is a work of some kind of strange genius that didn’t surface.

  Vision 1948

  Dread spirit in me that I ever try

  With written words to move,

  Hear thou my plea, at last reply

  To my impotent pen:

  Should I endure, and never prove

  Yourself and me in love,

  Tell me, spirit, tell me, O what then?

  And if not love, why, then, another passion

  For me to pass in image:

  Shadow, shadow, and blind vision.

  Dumb roar of the white trance,

  Ecstatic shadow out of rage,

  Power out of passage.

  Dance, dance, spirit, spirit, dance!

  Is it my fancy that the world is still,

  So gentle in her dream?

  Outside, great Harlems of the will

  Move under black sleep:

  Yet in spiritual scream,

  The saxophones the same

  As me in madness call thee from the deep.

  I shudder with intelligence and I

  Wake in the deep light

  And hear a vast machinery

  Descending without sound,

  Intolerable to me, too bright,

  And shaken in the sight

  The eye goes blind before the world goes round.204

  Anybody who’s dropped a little acid might make some hermetic message out of it, like an experience of some sort of break in the nature modality of regular thought forms and glimpse of something slightly larger. But since the poetry was a remanipulation of old images and old symbols that were traditional and classical there was no offering of direct perception of whatever it was that was seen and so there is no way to interpret or decipher what the writer has observed. It’s just a rehash of words like “light” and “power” and “passage” and “glee.” I was reading a lot of Blake, so next I wrote a little song, the first song I ever wrote, when I was having an affair with Neal Cassady. He had decided that it was all over and I went through this visionary experience, a withdrawal symptom, and then felt that in a sense I had suffered a spiritual death.

  A Western Ballad

  When I died, love, when I died

  my heart was broken in your care;

  I never suffered love so fair

  as now I suffer and abide

  when I died, love, when I died.

  When I died, love, when I died

  I wearied in an endless maze

  that men have walked for centuries,

  as endless as the gate was wide

  when I died, love, when I died.

  When I died, love, when I died

  there was a war in the upper air:

  all that happens, happens there;

  there was an angel at my side

  when I died, love, when I died.205

  That form of poetry didn’t seem to deliver any direct clarity, however. Kerouac has a character in The Town and the City, which had been modeled on me, Leon Levinsky. I didn’t like his caricature, so I made up for it by writing a poem dedicated to the character called “Sweet Levinsky.”

  Sweet Levinsky

  Sweet Levinsky in the night

  Sweet Levinsky in the light

  do you giggle out of spite,

  or are you laughing in delight

  sweet Levinsky, sweet Levinsky?

  Sweet Levinsky, do you tremble

  when the cock crows, and dissemble

  as you amble to the gambol?

  Why so humble when you stumble

  sweet Levinsky, sweet Levinsky?

  Sweet Levinsky, why so tearful,

  sweet Levinsky don’t be fearful,

  sweet Levinsky here’s your earful

  of the angels chirping cheerfully

  Levinsky, sweet Levinsky,

  sweet Levinsky, sweet Levinsky.206

  There was an interest in bop as well as that lyric and so a little mad song, since we were reading Christopher Smart, who wrote his long poem Jubilate Agno. So Kerouac and I collaborated on a lyric, called “Pull My Daisy,” and we used that as a title ten years later for a song by David Amram for a film, half an hour film, made by Robert Frank. “Pull my daisy, tip my cup, all my doors are open.” I had started a lyric, “Pull my daisy, tip my cup, cut my thoughts for coconuts,” meaning that my thoughts had become so palpable, or supposedly some kind of esoteric visionary reference, you know like “Pluck my flower,” you know everything’s flowered, or “Cut my thoughts for coconuts.” Thoughts that are so solid they could be cut like coconuts. However, Kerouac came in with another formula, a different form for the stanza, “Pull my daisy, tip my cup, all my doors are open,” and so we worked with that.

  Pull My Daisy

  Pull my daisy

  tip my cup

  all my doors are open

  Cut my thoughts

  for coconuts

  all my eggs are broken

  Jack my Arden

  gate my shades

  woe my road is spoken

  Silk my garden

  rose my days

  now my prayers awaken

  Bone my shadow

  dove my dream

  start my halo bleeding

  Milk my mind &

  make me cream

  drink me when you’re ready

  Hop my heart on

  harp my height

  seraphs hold me steady

  Hip my angel

  hype my light

  lay it on the needy

  Heat the raindrop

  sow the eye

  bust my dust again

  Woe the worm

  work the wise

  dig my spade the same

  Stop the hoax

  What’s the hex

  where’s the wake

  how’s the hicks

  take my golden beam

  Rob my locker

  lick my rocks

  leap my cock in school

  Rack my lacks

  lark my looks

&
nbsp; jump right up my hole

  Whore my door

  beat my door

  eat my snake of fool

  Craze my hair

  bare my poor

  asshole shorn of wool

  say my oops

  ope my shell

  bite my naked nut

  Roll my bones

  ring my bell

  call my worm to sup

  Pope my parts

  pop my pot

  raise my daisy up

  Poke my pap

  pit my plum

  let my gap be shut207

  We were composing it and we went downtown to see Neal Cassady, who was working in a parking lot, and we were doing the phrase “woe the worm, work the wise, dig my spade the same, stop the hoax,” and I think Kerouac said, “stop the hoax,” I said, “what’s the hex,” then Kerouac said, “where’s the wake?” And Cassady looked at us and said, “How’s the hicks?”

  The most solid rhyme metaphysical-sounding poem was written next. It’s called “Stanzas: Written at Night in Radio City” and that is probably the most successful of these archaic, outdated-style verses. Still it has somewhat of a hippie message in it. I was working as a copy boy for Associated Press and had lots of time at night to write little verses. Simultaneously with that was another kind of poem, totally different in method, called “After All, What Else Is There to Say?”

  After All, What Else Is There to Say?

  When I sit before a paper

  writing my mind turns

  in a kind of feminine

  madness of chatter;

  but to think to see, outside,

  in a tenement the walls

  of the universe itself

  I wait: wait till the sky

  appears as it is,

  wait for a moment when

  the poem itself

  is my way of speaking out, not

  declaiming of celebrating, yet,

  but telling the truth.208

  The point there is that I was having a kind of schizophrenic poetic method. Then a monk poem that connects them both, called “Metaphysics,” which is a Zen-style statement.

  Metaphysics

  This is the one and only

  firmament; therefore

  it is the absolute world.

  There is no other world.

  The circle is complete.

  I am living in Eternity.

  The ways of this world

  are the ways of Heaven.209

  Then the next move was [a collaboration] with Lucien Carr who worked for United Press. He had originally introduced me to Kerouac and introduced Kerouac and myself to Burroughs. He had a kind of Shakespearean modern voice himself but never did write. I had gotten out of a mental hospital and was working in a ribbon factory in Paterson and I got fired and went to see him and told him my story. He said, “I’ll show you how to write a poem about that.” So he dictated the following poem, which I took down quite literally and rearranged it into lines. This should give you some sense of the voice that you’ll hear Kerouac imitating also if you read Old Angel Midnight.

  How Come He Got Canned at the Ribbon Factory

  Chorus of Working Girls

  There was this character come in

  to pick up all the broken threads

  and tie them back into the loom.

  He thought that what he didn’t know

  would do as well as well did, tying

  threads together with real small knots.

  So there he was shivering in his shoes,

  showing his wish to be a god of all the knots

  we tended after suffering to learn them up.

  But years ago we were employed by Mr. Smith

  to tie these knots which it took us all

  of six months to perfect. However he showed

  no sign of progress learning how after five

  weeks of frigid circumstances of his own

  making which we made sure he didn’t break

  out of by freezing up on him. Obviously

  he wasn’t a real man anyway but a goop.210

  In another situation Lucien Carr dictated the following text, which I rearranged into lines because it seemed so sharp. We were talking about how to write a modern poem and he applied his newspapery style to it.

  The Archetype Poem

  Joe Blow has decided

  he will no longer

  be a fairy.

  He involves himself

  in various snatches

  and then hits

  a nut named Mary.

  He gets in bed with her

  and performs

  as what in his mind

  would be his usual

  okay job,

  which should be solid

  as a rock

  but isn’t.

  What goes wrong here?

  he says

  to himself. I want

  to take her

  but she doesn’t want

  to take me.

  I thought I was

  giving her * * *

  and she was giving

  me a man’s

  position in the world.

  Now suddenly she lays

  down the law.

  I’m very tired, she says,

  please go.

  Is this it? he thinks.

  I didn’t want it

  to come to that but

  I’ve got to get out

  of this situation.

  So the question

  resolves itself: do

  you settle for her

  or go? I wouldn’t

  give you a nickel,

  you aren’t much of a doll

  anyway. And he

  picks up his pride

  and puts on his pants

  —glad enough

  to have pants to wear—

  and goes.

  Why is it that versions

  of this lack

  of communication are

  universal?211

  However, what was necessary to add to this naturalistic style was some magical montage taken from the nature of the mind.

  CHAPTER 40

  Ginsberg and William Carlos Williams

  All along there was William Carlos Williams in Paterson, New Jersey. Around the time I met him he was writing [his long poem] Paterson. I had written a couple of letters to him in the late 1940s. Williams was interested in creating his own measure. As his editor John C. Thirlwall says in “Ten Years of a New Rhythm” in Pictures from Brueghel, “This measure he was not to find until Paterson, developing the ‘variable foot’ which produced versos sueltos, ‘loose verses,’ as he called them. There was a danger that even with the ‘variable foot,’ the triadic stanza might become monotonous as free verse had become monotonous.” Williams was arranging his lines into triadic stepping-stones down along the page. It was measure that rescued Williams first by rhythmical variations, as the blank verse of Shakespeare and Milton was rescued by rhythmical variations of iambic pentameter. “The iamb is not the normal measure of American speech,” Williams told me in 1953. “The foot has to be expanded or contracted in terms of actual speech. The key to modern poetry is measure, which must reflect the flux of modern life. For man and poet must keep pace with his world.” He was looking for a variable foot, so to speak, after Einstein, a relative measure, or variable measure. “Relative measure” is another phrase he used. Williams was also investigating the nature of his own speech and the nature of his own mind, just like Kerouac.

  I ran into Williams in 1948 and didn’t quite understand what he was doing until I heard him read in the Museum of Modern Art. I wrote him a couple
of letters and Williams liked them. It was like the voice of Paterson speaking back to him from the streets. He had written a huge epic called Paterson and all of a sudden here was a poetic kid from Paterson writing him back, so it knocked him out. Williams got this letter and then wrote back saying, “I’m going to put this in my book, do you mind?” And I said, “Gee, I’m going to be immortal,” because I thought he was immortal.

  Dear Doctor,

  In spite of the gray secrecy of time and my own self-shuddering doubts in these useful rainy days, I’d like to make my presence in Paterson known to you and I hope you will welcome this from me, an unknown poet, to you, an unknown old poet who live in the same rusty county of the world. Not only do I inscribe this missive somewhat in the style of those courteous sages of yore who recognized one another across the generations as brotherly children of the muses (whose names they well know) but also as fellow citizenly Chinamen of the same province, whose gastanks, junkyards, fens of the alley, millways, funeral parlors, river-visions—aye! the falls itself—are images white-woven in their very beards.

  I went to see you once briefly two years ago (when I was 21), to interview you for a local newspaper. I wrote the story in fine and simple style, but it was hacked and changed and came out the next week as a labored joke at your expense which I assume you did not get to see. You invited me politely to return, but I did not, as I had nothing to talk about except images of cloudy light, and was not able to speak to you in your own or my own concrete terms. Which failing still hangs with me to a lesser extent, yet I feel ready to approach you once more.

  As to my history: I went to Columbia on and off since 1943, working and traveling around the country and aboard ships when I was not in school, studying English. I won a few poetry prizes there and edited the Columbia Review. I liked Van Doren most there. I worked later on the Associated Press as a copyboy, and spent most of the last year in a mental hospital; and now I am back in Paterson which is home for the first time in seven years. What I’ll do there I don’t know yet—my first move was to try and get a job on one of the newspapers here and in Passaic, but that hasn’t been successful yet.

  My literary liking is Melville in Pierre and The Confidence Man, and in my own generation, one Jack Kerouac whose first book came out this year.

  I do not know if you will like my poetry or not—that is, how far your own inventive persistence excludes less independent or youthful attempts to perfect, renew, transfigure, and make contemporarily real an old style of lyric machinery, which I use to record the struggle with imagination of the clouds, with which I have been concerned. I enclose a few samples of my best writing. All that I have done has a program, consciously or not, running on from phase to phase, from the beginnings of emotional breakdown, to momentary raindrops from the clouds become corporeal, to a renewal of human objectivity which I take to be ultimately identical with no ideas but in things. But this last development I have yet to turn into poetic reality. I envision for myself some kind of new speech—different at least from what I have been writing down—in that it has to be clear statement of fact about misery (and not misery itself), and splendor if there is any out of the subjective wanderings through Paterson. This place is as I say my natural habitat by memory, and I am not following in your traces to be poetic: though I know you will be pleased to realize that at least one actual citizen of your community has inherited your experience in his struggle to love and know his own world-city, through your work, which is an accomplishment you almost cannot have hoped to achieve. It is misery I see (like a tide out of my own fantasy) but mainly the splendor which I carry within me and which all free men do. But harking back to a few sentences pervious, I may need a new measure myself, but though I have a flair for your style I seldom dig exactly what you are doing with cadences, line length, sometimes syntax, etc., and cannot handle your work as a solid object—which properties I assume you rightly claim. I don’t understand the measure. I haven’t worked with it much either, though, which must make the difference. But I would like to talk with you concretely on this.