On Mexico City Blues (35th Chorus)

Allen Ginsberg’s 1981 Naropa class on Jack Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues continues from here 

AG: 35th Chorus. (Allen begins reading from the 35th Chorus)

“It was the best show,/ the guys used to give up/a good movie/just to hear him talk/   Now is the Time/ Now is the Time/ To kill an hour/and Delaware Punch/ each/  A Star is Born -/ muckle lips in the movie/”I’d rather not”-/ “I really don’t wanta go” -/Yeah, fuck the movie./  Fuck the mambo./ Fuck is a dirty word/ But it comes out clean..” – (Which is one of the great lines in Mexico City Blues) –  “Fuck is a dirty word/But it comes out clean./ Everything (after a gasp)/ is fine, already really./ Whatever it was./ “Anyway it happened”/Says Allen (Poe) Ginsberg -/Quote from Plato right?/Time on a Bat – growl of truck.”

‘Anyway it happened” was the refrain of a nutty little mad song that I wrote that went something like, “I’m a pot and God’s a potter/And my head’s a piece of putty./Cut my thoughts/ For coconuts/ I’m so lucky to be that nutty/ Anyway it happened, anyway it happened.”

Something like that.  Whatever happened, it did happen, so it happened, so there’s nothing to complain about.  “Anyway it happened.”

“Fuck is a dirty word/But it comes out clean.”  Then he (was) commenting on his using the word “fuck,” which he didn’t do very often.  He didn’t often use dirty words in his writing on account of his mother would read them if they were ever published.  So he had a kind of feeling of gentility about that – he didn’t want to shock his mother too much, and that’s why he didn’t use much Henry Miller-esque frankness and outrageousness.  He didn’t get particularly outrageous except involuntarily, just the very nature of his subject matter was new and the nature of his mind was new.

But here he said, “Fuck the mambo.”  So here’s a little poem where, like everybody else, you write a poem where you use the word “fuck” all the time just to get through that particular self-consciousness or fear or barrier.  Some people have to write about their snot, some people have to write about the word “fuck,” and some people have to write about shit, and some people have to write about whatever they’re most adolescently self-conscious about, just to clear up that area and deal with it once and for all, which I think almost every poet does at one time or other, or should.  Just in the natural course of things, explore whatever perdure, whatever delicacy or modesty that might withhold him from saying anything ugly scratching at the back of his mind.

So generally people at some point or other write an ugly poem, which is really ugly and repulsive, but it’s alright.  It’s not usually very good and it’s not usually worth publishing, it’s just all the irrelevant self-mucous criticism of the body.

So here he’s going through the word “fuck” – (“I’d rather not”-/”I really don’t wanta go”-/ Yeah, fuck the movie./  Fuck the mambo./ Fuck is a dirty word/ But it comes out clean/  Everything (after a gasp)/is fine, already really..” – (even if we said “fuck.”) – “Everything (after a gasp)/ is fine, already really./Whatever it was./ “Anyway it happened”/Says Allen (Poe) Ginsberg -/Quote from Plato right?/Time on a Bat – growl of truck.’

I don’t know what “Time on a Bat” is.  But batter out on time or you just batted out on time.  Or whatever.

Then, to the immediate street around him, “growl of truck.”  That’s the comment on the whole subjective brouhaha of saying “fuck” in a poem – “growl of a truck.”

Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately three-and-three-quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately seven-and-a-half minutes in

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *