Allen Ginsberg, 1981, on Jack Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues continues from here
AG: Yes. 4th Chorus. So – the next thing.
“Roosevelt was worth 6, 7 million dollars”
Actually, I haven’t checked these over today, so these associations I’m giving you are just out of recollection.
Roosevelt was worth 6, 7 million dollars
He was Tight
Frog waits
Till poor fly
Flies by
And then they got him
The pool of clear rocks
Covered with vegetable scum
Covered the rocks
Clear the pool
Covered the warm surface
Covered the lotus
Dusted the watermelon flower
Aerial the pad
Clean queer the clear
blue water
AND THEN THEY GOT HIM
The oil of the Olive
Bittersweet taffies
Bittersweet cabbage
Cabbage soup made right
A hunk a grass
Sauerkraut let work
in a big barrel
Stunk but Good
So this is just associations. Beginning, I guess, with his little irritability about Roosevelt (“He was Tight”) – Then he goes back to the frog -(“Frog waits” – the snake’s going for the frog I guess. And the frog waits for the poor fly) – “Flies by/And then they got him”-(Every one of the images of the clear pool images or the pretty images he’s got covered over with tragic karma in this little comment) – ” The pool of clear rocks/ Covered with vegetable scum/Covered the rocks/ Clear the pool/Covered the warm surface/ Covered the lotus” – (The Buddhist lotus of mind) – “Dusted the watermelon flower/Aerial the pad” – (He’s just making … he liked the word “Aerial.” Airy angels are in heaven – He uses “airy” and “aerial” a lot for “angelic and empty”, “clean”, in his prose. So he just went back to the word “aerial” and thought of the lotus pad, or the pad he’s living in, maybe, the room, or Garver‘s pad. “Aerial the pad” up on the third floor. Or aerial) –
“Clean queer the clear/blue water”- (He’s getting a little campy) – Clean queer the clear/blue water” – (I guess the little rhyme) – And then, “AND THEN THEY GOT HIM” (which is in caps – “AND THEN THEY GOT HIM”) – So it’s like the frog got the fly and the snake got the frog and the humans got what they got). So it’s. “The oil of the Olive/Bittersweet taffies/ Bittersweet cabbage” – (Bittersweet death, or bittersweet the situation of being got. But “taffies”, “cabbage”. Olive Oil is obviously Popeye (Olive Oyl) – Or else maybe he’s cooking with olive oil) – “A hunk a grass” – (“A hunk a grass” — a h-u-n-k a g-r-a-s-s, instead of “of” – instead of “A hunk of grass,” “A hunk a grass”)
Student: (Hunk?)
AG: Sure. Then the mind… his mind has gone off. “A hunk of grass..” Grass led to the sauerkraut – “Sauerkraut let work/ in a big barrel/ Stunk but Good” -(So “Sauerkraut let work” – he probably wrote that first, and then he had to figure out how to finish a sentence like that – “Sauerkraut let work”? Because I don’t think he thought in advance of “Sauerkraut let work/in a big barrel/Stunk but Good.” So he probably said “Sauerkraut let work….” And probably the next thing was “in a big barrel” – that would make sense, then. If you let the sauerkraut work in a big barrel. Or, the sauerkraut, intransitive – “Sauerkraut let work”, left to work – “Sauerkraut let work/in a big barrel/Stunk but Good” – (So it ends up “Stunk but Good.” It’s a funny thought. Just interior thoughts when you were high).
Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately thirty-eight-and-a-quarter minutes in and concluding at approximate forty-two-and-a-quarter minutes in