Beerspit Night and Cursing
Page 39
Patunjoli: i.e., Patanjali, founder of Yoga and author of the Yogasutras.
Appolonius of Tyana: i.e., Apollonius, Greek Neo-Pythagorean philosopher of the first century A.D., mentioned often in the Rock-Drill Cantos.
Swedenburg: Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), Swedish philosopher and mystic.
Sloans: unidentified (“of no importance,” said Gilbert).
Kay Harrison: SM credited this woman with introducing her to astrology.
Pat Green: Gilbert thinks she may have been a member of the San Francisco Art Guild.
Bukowski edition of the A & P: issue 7, dated 20 March 1966 (but not published until the following month), consists of astrological charts and readings for CB, his daughter, Ezra and Dorothy Pound, H.D., and mutual friends.
a longplay of me talking: advertised as Bukowski Talking, it never appeared.
Patchen: Kenneth Patchen (1911-72), American writer and painter.
Richmond…Hitler Painted Roses: Steve Richmond’s book was published in April 1966.
Steppenwolf #1: CB reviewed Corrington’s Lines to the South and Other Poems (1966) under the title “Another Burial of a Once-Talent.”
Bobby Watson: both of CB’s bibliographers credit Darrell Kerr and Charles Potts with editing Poems, not Watson.
All the Assholes…: a chapbook published in September 1966. The story was reprinted in CB’s South of No North (1973).
“they call this Friday good”: from Eliot’s “East Coker,” part 4.
Steel Splinter: in his letter of 23? July 1960, CB claimed his parents were “splints of steel.”
“whimper…BANG”: from the conclusion of Eliot’s “The Hollow Men.”
“moving slowly like a dancer”: cf. “move in measure, like a dancer,” from part 2 of Eliot’s “Little Gidding.”
Pythagoras: Greek philosopher and mathematician of the 6th century B.C.
Joyce’s…alone”: misquoted from Chamber Music #35: “Sad as the seabird is, when going / Forth alone.”
Wearing his trousers rolled: from Eliot’s “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”
Abner Dean: American cartoonist and illustrator (1910-1982).
Eliot’s…reserved for age”: from “Little Gidding,” part 2.
Eliot…coffee spoons”: another quotation from “Prufrock.”
“If you…H.D.”: from “The Moon in Your Hands” (quoted earlier in SM’s letter of 19 April 1961).
stir’d me out of the dust: an echo of Pound’s remark to SM in Canto 93: “You have stirred my mind out of dust” (652).
Leslie Wolf Hedly: Leslie Woolf Hedley (1918-), minor American writer, editor of a magazine called Inferno (1950-56). CB rejected some of his poems when co-editing Harlequin (Sounes 39).
Layton…Evidence: CB’s review of Irving Layton’s Laughing Rooster appeared in Evidence #9.
And the Moon…: first published (with different line breaks) in 1969 in DRA (108).
woman: by 1966 CB had separated from Frances Elizabeth Dean.
EP’s “priestess astray in the streets”: source unknown.
Di Chirico: Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978), Italian surrealist painter.
Animus…Canto 95: actually, the epigraph to Canto 90, from Richard of St. Victor’s Quomodo Spiritus sanctus est amor Patris et Filii.
“to work is to pray”: an anonymous Latin saying (laborare est orare).
The Stupid…after Work: both published in The Eight Pager in 1966.
John Bryan: journalist and editor; CB occasionally contributed to his magazine.
Neal Cassady: Denver hipster immortalized in Kerouac’s On the Road and Visions of Cody.
DeMop: Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893); poem from which this is taken unknown.
Today…No. 1”: a brief article written by Jay Robert Nash.
Ole…Wondering: in Ole #3 (November 1965); see SB 169-71.
Wang Shou-jen…The Way of Chinese Painting: Chinese philsopher (1472-1528); the book is unidentified.
Kati…good nature”: the Egyptian king’s aphorism is quoted at the beginning of Canto 93.
Artie Richer: a poet and painter who contributed to A&P.
H.D.…godless place”: from “Acon” and “Sea Heroes,” respectively.
Earth 2…Charles Somebody”: a polemic entitled “In Defense of a Certain Type of Poetry, a Certain Type of Life, a Certain Type of Blood-Filled Creature Who Will Someday Die—.”
“The human soul…from it”: an English translation of the Latin epigraph to Canto 90 (625); see SM’s letter of 12 April 1966 and note.
Telo Rigido: Italian: “with rigid javelin” (a sexual reference), from Canto 20 (91).
‘e forma di Filosophia’: Italian: “is the form of philosophy,” form Canto 93 (646).
John Thomas: a poet CB hung out with at the time. An avid drug user, Thomas introduced CB to yage and LSD. See his memoir Bukowski in the Bathtub, ed. Philomene Long (Raven, 1997).
Horse Vessell Song: “The Horst Wessel Song” was a popular Nazi anthem.
Goring: Hermann Göring, Hitler’s chief of the Luftwaffe; he committed suicide in jail in 1946.