Allen Ginsberg on “The Proverbs of Hell” from William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell continues from here
AG: “A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.” Is that clear? “A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees”? That’s really true. There’s a poem of Philip Whalen‘s that exemplifies that, when he’s talking about the Northwestern Forest which for some people are nothing but 275,000 board-feet, cubic feet of wood, at $200 dollars a thousand board-feet, or whatever. [Editorial note – Allen references here lines from Whalen’s “The Slop Barrel” – “….tree, you are lumber/Top-grade douglas fir/At so many bucks per thousand-board feet/A given amount credit in the bank/So that beyond a certain number of trees/Or volume of credit you don’t have to know or see. Nothing”]. And for other people this is a mighty Ponderosa Pine. So, “A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.”
“He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.” Now, what is that? How do you make that (out)? Is this movies? Yeah, it’s very odd. It could be obvious, you know, you never become a movie star unless you’re really beautiful but, “He whose face gives no energy light, shall never become a fixed reference point for other humans beings in the centuries to come.” – (That’s) one way. Or just a fixed reference point of energy for people who are living in this time in the classroom..
to be continued