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
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 wri
tten 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.
Best Minds of My Generation Page 32