So sorry to those who tried to get in to the reading last week and couldn’t. There haven’t been too many errors over the ten (10!) years of these sessions, but last week happened. While we usually host an in-person and Zoom reading at Winchester on the 2nd Saturday of the month, it’s too darned hot. So no in-person reading this month. But yes, there will be a Zoom poetry reading and discussion. Click on the link below at the appointed time to join.
Poetry Reading and Discussion Saturday July 12 2:00 PM PDT
To Join by Telephone: (669) 444-9171
Meeting ID: 889 6409 1825
Passcode: 658409
The time we’ve lived through in American poetry seems likely to be remembered as the Beat Era. Beat is the last movement of the arts to influence American and western culture so broadly. Even writers who’d prefer otherwise may be canonized with this moniker, much as Shelley, Byron, & Keats are grouped with Wordsworth & Coleridge as Romantic poets. Partly, this reflects the influence of anthologies in publishing, and partly it’s common aesthetics of movements such as Confessional, New York School, sexual and ethnic liberation movements, et al.
This week, I’m reading one of the great Beat poems too easily overlooked. It’s Gregory Corso’s Elegiac Feelings American, his elegy of Jack Kerouac. Kerouac sent my generation of young men out on the road, was embittered by his fame, by the cursory reception of his writing, and died of alcoholism in 1969. Corso’s elegy arguably forms, with Howl, a bookend of the best Beat poems. With Kerouac’s death and Corso’s elegy, the most fertile time of Beat writing comes to a close. Corso’s life made him a hard case: raised in orphanages and foster homes, he was in and out of jail where he became an avid reader. He met Allen Ginsberg at age 20 who showed him to a different side of literature and helped set him on a literary life. He published only five slim volumes until Mindfield in 1998, which is for me the best single book to own. Here are some selections from the poem Elegiac Feelings American for you.
Elegiac Feelings American for the dear memory of John Kerouac How inseparable you and the America you saw yet was never there to see; you and America, like the tree and the ground, are one the same; yet how like a palm tree in the state of Oregon . . . dead ere it blossomed, like a snow polar loping the Miami— How so that which you were or hoped to be, and the America not, the America you saw yet could not see So like yet unlike the ground from which you stemmed; you stood upon America like a rootless flat-bottomed tree; to the squirrel there was no divorcement in its hop of ground to its climb of tree . . . until it saw no acorn fall, then it knew there was no marriage between the two; how fruitless, how useless, the sad unnaturalness of nature; no wonder the dawn ceased being a joy . . . for what good the earth and sun when the tree in between is good for nothing . . . the inseparable trinity, once dissevered. becomes a cold fruitless meaningless thrice-marked deathlie in its awful amputation . . . O butcher the pork-chop is not the pig—The American alien in America is a bitter truncation; and even this elegy, dear Jack, shall have a butchered tree, a tree beaten to a pulp, upon which it’ll be contained—no wonder no good news can be written on such bad news— ... Was not so much our finding America as it was America finding its voice in us; many spoke to America as though America by land-right was theirs by law-right legislatively acquired by materialistic coups of wealth and inheritance; like the citizen of society believes himself the owner of society, and what he makes of himself he makes of America and thus when he speaks of America he speaks of himself, and quite often such a he is duly elected to represent what he represents . . . an infernal ego of an America Thus many a patriot speaks lovingly of himself when he speaks of America, and not to appreciate him is not to appreciate America, and vice-versa ... Alas, Jack. seems I cannot requiem thee without requieming America, and that‘s one requiem I shall not presume, for as long as I live there’ll be no requiems for me ... Yours the eyes that. saw, the heart that felt, the voice that sang and cried; and as long as America shall live, though ye old Kerouac body hath died, yet shall you live . . . for indeed ours was a time of prophecy without death as a consequence . . . for indeed after us came the time of assassins, and who'll doubt thy last words “After me . . . the deluge” ... We came to announce the human spirit in the name of beauty and truth; and now this spirit cries out in nature’s sake the horrendous imbalance of all things natural . . . elusive nature caught! like a bird in hand, harnessed and engineered in the unevolutional ways of experiment and technique ... What hope for the America so embodied in thee, O friend, when the very same alcohol that disembodied your brother redman of his America, disembodied ye—A plot to grab their land, we know—yet what plot to grab the ungrabbable land of one’s spirit? Thy visionary America were impossible to unvision—for when the shades of the windows of the spirit are brought down, that which was seen yet remains . . . the eyes of the spirit yet see Aye the America so embodied in thee, so definitely rooted therefrom, is the living embodiment of all humanity, young and free And though the great redemptive tree blooms, not yet full, not yet entirely sure. there be the darksters, sad and old. would like to have it fall; they hack and chop and saw away . . . that nothing full and young and free for sure be left to stand at all Verily were such. trees as youth be . . . were such be made to fall, and never rise to fall again, then shall the ground fall, and the deluge come and wash it asunder, wholly all and forever, like a wind out of nowhere into nowhere ... How a Whitman we were always wanting, a hoping, an America, that America ever an America to be, never an America to sing about or to, but ever an America to sing hopefully for All we had was past America, and ourselves, the now America, and O how we regarded that past! And O the big lie of that school classroom! The Revolutionary War . . . all we got was Washington, Revere, Henry, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Franklin . . . never Nat Bacon, Sam Adams, Paine . . . and what of liberty? was not to gain liberty that war, liberty they had, they were the freest peoples of their time; was not to lose that liberty was why they went to arms—yet, and yet, the season that blossomed us upon the scene was hardly free; be there liberty today? not to hear the redman, the blackman, the youngman tell— ... So, sweet seeker, just what America sought you anyway? Know that today there are millions of Americans seeking America . . . know that even with all those eye-expanding chemicals—only more of what is not there do they see Some find America in songs of clumping stone, some in fogs of revolution All find it in their hearts . . . and O how it tightens the heart Not so much their being imprisoned in an old and unbearable America . . . more the America imprisoned in them—so wracks and darkens the spirit ... The prophet affects the state, and the state affects the prophet—What happened to you, O friend, happened to America, and we know what happened to America—the stain . . . the stains, O and yet when it’s asked of you “What happened to him?" I say “What happened to America has happened him—the two were inseparable” Like the wind to the sky is the voice to the word. . . . And now that voice is gone, and now the word is bone, and the America is going, the planet boned A man can have everything he desires in his home yet have nothing outside the door—for a feeling man, a poet man, such an outside serves only to make home a place in which to hang oneself ... And what has happened to our dream of beauteous America, Jack? Did it look beautiful to you, did it sound so too, in its cold electric blue, that America that spewed and stenched your home, your good brain, that unreal fake America, that caricature of America, that plugged in a wall America . . . a gallon of desperate whiskey a day it took ye to look that America in its disembodied eye And it saw you not, it never saw you. for what you saw was not there, what you saw was Laugh-in, and all America was in laughing, that America brought you in, brought America in, all that out there brought in, all that nowhere nothing in, no wonder you were lonesome, died empty and sad and lonely, you the real face and voice . . . caught before the fake face and voice—and it became real and you fake, O the awful fragility of things "What. happened to him?” “What happened to you?" Death happened him; a gypped life happened; a God gone sick happened; a dream nightmared; a youth armied; an army massacred; the father wants to eat the son, the son feeds his stone, but the father no get stoned ... Aye, what happened to you, dear friend, compassionate friend, is what is happening to everyone and thing of planet the clamorous sadly desperate planet now one voice less . . . expendable as the wind . . . gone, and who'll now blow away the awful miasma of sick, sick and dying earthflesh-soul America When you went on the road looking for America you found only what you put there and a man seeking gold finds the only America there is to find: and his investment and a poet‘s investment . . . the same when comes the crash, and it’s crashing, yet the windows are tight, are not for jumping: from hell none e’er fell 4. In Hell angels sing too And they sang to behold anew Those who followed the first Christ-bearer left hell and beheld a world new yet with guns and Bibles came they and soon their new settlement became old and once again hell held quay The ArcAngel Raphael was I to you And I put the Cross of the Lord of Angels upon you . . . there on the eve of a new world to explore And you were flashed upon the old and darkling day a Beat Christ-boy . . . bearing the gentle roundness of things insisting the soul was round not square And soon . . . behind thee there came a-following the children of flowers North Beach, San Francisco, 1969 ~
These are some of my chosen stanzas from the poem, one of the great poems of the era to me. Here is a link to Corso reading the poem. The poem is still current, applies to our times, remains politically and culturally astute. And it’s filled with great lines and images: like a snow polar loping the Miami, the poem contained on the tree beaten to a pulp, the infernal ego of America, the artist bearing the gentle roundness of things… Big themes of American resistance and its view of authoritarian culture are there— love of the land which was fouled and stolen from the natives, the American artist aliened at home, the elusive hope for living up to ideals, the perversion of the Revolution of ‘76, irredeemable materialism and greed. The Beat moment is there too—not so much our finding America as it was America finding its voice in us. The snubbed, humiliating downfall of a poet is there— one whose writing set the young of America ablaze with wonder and hope. “Know that today there are millions of Americans seeking America…know that even with all those eye-expanding chemicals—only more of what is not there do they see.”
It’s hard in our times not to write about the America we see, love, hope for, and find disillusion with. Yet few have done it with such clarity and affection as Corso writing on the death of his friend Jack Kerouac. It’s hard to write with understanding, empathy, and affection of the turns and twists of the nation. Yet maybe we can find a way into that, a way into the heart of what we love or admire or makes us feel good about the country, Often we don’t see these things clearly until they disappear. Find something you particularly love about your life here that has disappeared, gone away, or just changed. Maybe it’s a food, a town, a pet or a person. Describe that thing—and your feeling for it—as best you can. Use images, strong images, sense images, don’t be afraid to be metaphorical. You don’t have to explain, we’ll understand. Let the image tell us how you feel or felt about this person / place / thing that you love. Describe its specifics—but maybe this thing is bigger than specifics. Maybe it represents a way of life, a feeling of security or comfort for you. What does it mean to be without it? Loss is a teacher. Can you tell us how that feels? What does this feeling do to the images you used earlier? Write it all up and bring the poem to the reading. Or just bring whatever you’re reading and writing.
Hope to see you at Poetry!
We received a critical donation from Gray's Leadership Academy. Our weekly workshop events were sponsored by Nevada Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Write your representative to encourage arts funding, they may not be allowed to continue. Our in-person workshops are supported by Clark County at Winchester Dondero Cultural Center. We also receive support from the good people at Clark County Public Arts. Thank you!Bruce Isaacson
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