Allen Ginsberg on Jack Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues continues from here
AG: And this one he thought was – 44th Chorus, coming up – the end of it he liked as being the equivalent to the great Shakespearean run-on lines or improvisational lines of Shakespeare – just the pure sound of it.
“Waves of cantos” – (Ezra) Pound’s Cantos) – “Waves of cantos and choruses/ And lilypads of anything/ Like flying carpets that are/ nowhere/ And all’s bugged with the scene -/ Ah I wish I could fight out/Of this net of mistakes/ And anxieties among others/ Who wait in my silence/ Till I end up my work/ Which never began and/ Never will end – hah -/ Bespeak thyself not, soft spot,/Aurorum’s showed his Mountain/ Top/ Of Eastern be Western morning/ To Indicate by Moon Magic/ Constellative Stardom/ of/ Gazers/ in mock Roman/ Arabian Kimonos,/ the lay of the pack/ in the sky.”
That’s a good sound. I mean, a good mouthful – “Aurorum’s showed his Mountain/ Top/ Of Eastern be Western morning/ To Indicate by Moon Magic/ Constellative Stardom/ of/ Gazers/ in mock Roman/ Arabian Kimonos,/ the lay of the pack/ in the sky”
He’s got a line later … in the middle [Editorial note, at the beginning (sic)]. He’s talking about writing all his poems – “Waves of cantos and choruses/ And lilypads of anything/ Like flying carpets that are/ nowhere”
All this pretty poetry – nowhere. “And all’s bugged with the scene -” – “all’s bugged with the scene” – it’s sort of like a Shakespearean way of saying, “I’m bugged with the scene, man. I’ve got to drop out.” “And all’s bugged with the scene.” So he’s combined the hippie “bugged with the scene” with “And all’s bugged with the scene.” And all’s right. Just some Shakespeare phrase where all is a fool’s … or something – A-L-L-apostrophe-S – “And all’s bugged with the scene.”
Then, just very personal, Kerouac – ” “Ah I wish I could fight out/Of this net of mistakes/And anxieties among others/Who wait in my silence….” – (Who were waiting, dependent on his work) – “Which never began and/Never will end – hah -”
Then he decides to have a little Shakespearean cadenza – “Of Eastern be Western morning/To Indicate by Moon Magic” – “Eastern be Western morning.”? – That’s.. I think he’s just starting off with an echo of the Shakespeare’s sonnet about “Full many a (glorious) morning have I seen/Flatter the mountain tops...” Does anybody know that? “Full many a … morning have I seen/Flatter the mountain tops.” (Sonnet 33) – You don’t even know Shakespeare’s Sonnets? – [none of the students appear to raise their hand] – Yeah, that’s interesting. How can you appreciate Kerouac without knowing Shakespeare, appreciating Shakespeare? – which was the first thing I learned when I came here to teach in 1974-’75 – when I had a class on Kerouac and taught one or two – (I did never teach the whole book but I taught one or two) – and I was pointing out that Kerouac had a great ear and that he really adored Shakespeare’s ear and that he would paraphrase Shakespeare’s ear and paraphrase Shakespeare’s phrasing as pure perfect poetries, little poetry ditties of sound. And then I quoted from the last of these Mexico City Blues and then I asked in class who had read Shakespeare, and apparently two people out of thirty had read Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”
And that’s why I started here instead of just teaching Gregory (Corso) and (William) Burroughs and Kerouac, I went back and year after year to teach some basic poetics course, like the Romantics course I’m teaching now. [Editorial note – Allen began his teaching at Naropa in its inaugural year, 1974]. Because, on account of television, most people nowadays don’t have the basic Shakespearean education that we had from the ‘Forties and ‘Thirties. To know (or) to recognize that sound of Shakespeare or Renaissance (Christopher) Marlowe, Shakespeare mouth-babble – just pure beautiful mouthing of language, (which is why he liked Rabelais, too). (It) gets built in your system of senses if you just read a lot of Shakespeare.
Well, there is a famous Shakespeare sonnet – or used to be famous Shakespeare sonnet, and it is famous as far as people referring to it- everybody knew it – “Full many a glorious morning have I seen/Flatter the mountain tops with gilded lap” – I’ve forgotten.. Has anybody heard of that? The sun flattering the mountaintop? Well, it’s a very famous image in Shakespeare. The morning sun flattering the mountaintops with crimson ray, or something. Gilded ray. It’s kind of nice. [Editorial note – the first four lines of Shakespeare’s sonnet reads – “Full many a glorious morning have I seen/Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,/Kissing with golden face the meadows green,/Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy”]
So, sun has showed – morning on the mountains, to show or indicate. The Roman, Arabian, and himself, and anybody modern, gazing into the sky to try and read the future and find the ultimate nature of the universe. Sunrise. A simple old sunrise has shown the lay of the pack of the sky – where the stars were and where they were going.
The audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately fifty minutes in and concluding at approximately fifty-four-and-three-quarter minutes in