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The Poetry of Jack Kerouac
Scattered Poems, The Scripture of the Golden Eternity, and Old Angel Midnight
Jack Kerouac
CONTENTS
Publisher’s Note on Poetry
Scattered Poems
A TRANSLATION FROM THE FRENCH OF JEAN-LOUIS INCOGNITEAU
Song: FIE MY FUM
PULL MY DAISY
PULL MY DAISY
He is your friend
Old buddy aint you gonna stay by me?
DAYDREAMS FOR GINSBERG
LUCIEN MIDNIGHT
Someday you’ll be lying
I clearly saw
HYMN
POEM: I demand that the human race
THE THRASHING DOVES
The Buddhist Saints
HOW TO MEDITATE
A PUN FOR AL GELPI
SEPT. 16, 1961
RIMBAUD
from OLD ANGEL MIDNIGHT
MORE OLD ANGEL MIDNIGHT
Auro Boralis Shomoheen
LONG DEAD’S LONGEVITY
SITTING UNDER TREE NUMBER TWO
A CURSE AT THE DEVIL
Sight is just dust
POEM
TO EDWARD DAHLBERG
TWO POEMS
TO ALLEN GINSBERG
POEM: Jazz killed itself
TO HARPO MARX
HITCH HIKER
FOUR POEMS from “SAN FRANCISCO BLUES”
from SAN FRANCISCO BLUES
BLUES: And he sits embrowned
BLUES: Part of the morning stars
Hey listen you poetry audiences
SOME WESTERN HAIKUS (from BOOK OF HAIKU)
The Scripture of the Golden Eternity
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51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
Old Angel Midnight
Dedication
Old Angel Midnight
Editor’s Note
About the Author
Publisher’s Note
Long before they were ever written down, poems were organized in lines. Since the invention of the printing press, readers have become increasingly conscious of looking at poems, rather than hearing them, but the function of the poetic line remains primarily sonic. Whether a poem is written in meter or in free verse, the lines introduce some kind of pattern into the ongoing syntax of the poem’s sentences; the lines make us experience those sentences differently. Reading a prose poem, we feel the strategic absence of line.
But precisely because we’ve become so used to looking at poems, the function of line can be hard to describe. As James Longenbach writes in The Art of the Poetic Line, “Line has no identity except in relation to other elements in the poem, especially the syntax of the poem’s sentences. It is not an abstract concept, and its qualities cannot be described generally or schematically. It cannot be associated reliably with the way we speak or breathe. Nor can its function be understood merely from its visual appearance on the page.” Printed books altered our relationship to poetry by allowing us to see the lines more readily. What new challenges do electronic reading devices pose?
In a printed book, the width of the page and the size of the type are fixed. Usually, because the page is wide enough and the type small enough, a line of poetry fits comfortably on the page: What you see is what you’re supposed to hear as a unit of sound. Sometimes, however, a long line may exceed the width of the page; the line continues, indented just below the beginning of the line. Readers of printed books have become accustomed to this convention, even if it may on some occasions seem ambiguous—particularly when some of the lines of a poem are already indented from the left-hand margin of the page.
But unlike a printed book, which is stable, an ebook is a shape-shifter. Electronic type may be reflowed across a galaxy of applications and interfaces, across a variety of screens, from phone to tablet to computer. And because the reader of an ebook is empowered to change the size of the type, a poem’s original lineation may seem to be altered in many different ways. As the size of the type increases, the likelihood of any given line running over increases.
Our typesetting standard for poetry is designed to register that when a line of poetry exceeds the width of the screen, the resulting run-over line should be indented, as it might be in a printed book. Take a look at John Ashbery’s “Disclaimer” as it appears in two different type sizes.
Each of these versions of the poem has the same number of lines: the number that Ashbery intended. But if you look at the second, third, and fifth lines of the second stanza in the right-hand version of “Disclaimer,” you’ll see the automatic indent; in the fifth line, for instance, the word ahead drops down and is indented. The automatic indent not only makes poems easier to read electronically; it also helps to retain the rhythmic shape of the line—the unit of sound—as the poet intended it. And to preserve the integrity of the line, words are never broken or hyphenated when the line must run over. Reading “Disclaimer” on the screen, you can be sure that the phrase “you pause before the little bridge, sigh, and turn ahead” is a complete line, while the phrase “you pause before the little bridge, sigh, and turn” is not.
Open Road has adopted an electronic typesetting standard for poetry that ensures the clearest possible marking of both line breaks and stanza breaks, while at the same time handling the built-in function for resizing and reflowing text that all ereading devices possess. The first step is the appropriate semantic markup of the text, in which the formal elements distinguishing a poem, including lines, stanzas, and degrees of indentation, are tagged. Next, a style sheet that reads these tags must be designed, so that the formal elements of the poems are always displayed consistently. For instance, the style sheet reads the tags marking lines that the author himself has indented; should that indented line exceed the character capacity of a screen, the run-over part of the line will be indented further, and all such runovers will look the same. This combination of appropriate coding choices and style sheets makes it easy to display poems with complex indentations, no matter if the lines are metered or free, end-stopped or enjambed.
Ultimately, there may be no way to account for every single variation in the way in which the lines of a poem are disposed visually on an electronic reading device, just as rare variations may challenge the
conventions of the printed page, but with rigorous quality assessment and scrupulous proofreading, nearly every poem can be set electronically in accordance with its author’s intention. And in some regards, electronic typesetting increases our capacity to transcribe a poem accurately: In a printed book, there may be no way to distinguish a stanza break from a page break, but with an ereader, one has only to resize the text in question to discover if a break at the bottom of a page is intentional or accidental.
Our goal in bringing out poetry in fully reflowable digital editions is to honor the sanctity of line and stanza as meticulously as possible—to allow readers to feel assured that the way the lines appear on the screen is an accurate embodiment of the way the author wants the lines to sound. Ever since poems began to be written down, the manner in which they ought to be written down has seemed equivocal; ambiguities have always resulted. By taking advantage of the technologies available in our time, our goal is to deliver the most satisfying reading experience possible.
Scattered Poems
The new American poetry as typified by the SF Renaissance (which means Ginsberg, me, Rexroth, Ferlinghetti, McClure, Corso, Gary Snyder, Philip Lamantia, Philip Whalen, I guess) is a kind of new-old Zen Lunacy poetry, writing whatever comes into your head as it comes, poetry returned to its origin, in the bardic child, truly ORAL as Ferling said, instead of gray faced Academic quibbling. Poetry & prose had for long time fallen into the false hands of the false. These new pure poets confess forth for the sheer joy of confession. They are CHILDREN. They are also childlike graybeard Homers singing in the street. They SING, they SWING. It is diametrically opposed to the Eliot shot, who so dismally advises his dreary negative rules like the objective correlative, etc. which is just a lot of constipation and ultimately emasculation of the pure masculine urge to freely sing. In spite of the dry rules he set down his poetry is itself sublime. I could say lots more but aint got time or sense. But SF is the poetry of a new Holy Lunacy like that of ancient times (Li Po, Hanshan, Tom O Bedlam, Kit Smart, Blake) yet it also has that mental discipline typified by the haiku (Basho, Buson), that is, the discipline of pointing out things directly, purely, concretely, no abstractions or explanations, wham wham the true blue song of man.
Jack Kerouac—THE ORIGINS OF JOY IN POETRY
A TRANSLATION FROM THE FRENCH OF JEAN-LOUIS INCOGNITEAU*
My beloved who wills not to love me:
My life which cannot love me:
I seduce both.
She with my round kisses …
(In the smile of my beloved the approbation of the cosmos)
Life is my art …
(Shield before death)
Thus without sanction I live.
(What unhappy theodicy!)
One knows not—
One desires—
Which is the sum.
Allen Ginsberg
*(Kerouac translated by Ginsberg)
1945
Song: FIE MY FUM
Pull my daisy,
Tip my cup,
Cut my thoughts
For coconuts,
Start my arden
Gate my shades,
Silk my garden
Rose my days,
Say my oops,
Ope my shell,
Roll my bones,
Ring my bell,
Pope my parts,
Pop my pot,
Poke my pap,
Pit my plum.
Allen Ginsberg & Jack Kerouac
1950
PULL MY DAISY
Pull my daisy
tip my cup
all my doors are open
Cut my thoughts
for coconuts
all my eggs are broken
Jack my Arden
gate my shades
woe my road is spoken
Silk my garden
rose my days
now my prayers awaken
Bone my shadow
dove my dream
Milk my mind &
make me cream
drink me when you’re ready
Hop my heart on
harp my height
seraphs hold me steady
Hip my angel
hype my light
lay it on the needy
Heal the raindrop
sow the eye
bust my dust again
Woe the worm
work the wise
dig my spade the same
Stop the hoax
what’s the hex
where’s the wake
how’s the hicks
take my golden beam
Rob my locker
lick my rocks
leap my cock in school
Rack my lacks
lark my looks
jump right up my hole
Whore my door
beat my boor
eat my snake of fool
Craze my hair
bare my poor
asshole shorn of wool
say my oops
ope my shell
Bite my naked nut
Roll my bones
ring my bell
call my worm to sup
Pope my parts
pop my pot
raise my daisy up
Poke my pap
pit my plum
let my gap be shut
Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady
1948-1950?
1961
PULL MY DAISY
Pull my daisy
Tip my cup
Cut my thoughts
for coconuts
Jack my Arden
Gate my shades
Silk my garden
Rose my days
Bone my shadow
Dove my dream
Milk my mind &
Make me cream
Hop my heart on
Harp my height
Hip my angel
Hype my light
Heal the raindrop
Sow the eye
Woe the worm
Work the wise
Stop the hoax
Where’s the wake
What’s the box
How’s the Hicks
Rob my locker
Lick my rocks
Rack my lacks
Lark my looks
Whore my door
Beat my beer
Craze my hair
Bare my poor
Say my oops
Ope my shell
Roll my bones
Ring my bell
Pope my parts
Pop my pet
Poke my pap
Pit my plum
Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady
1951, 1958?
1961
He is your friend, let him dream;
He’s not St. Michael he’s a guy.
He’s married, he works, go on sleeping
On the other side of the world,
Go thinking in the Great European Night
I’m explaining him to you my way not yours,
Child, Dog,—listen: go find your soul,
Go smell the wind, go far.
Life is a pity. Close the book, go on,
Write no more on the wall, on the moon,
At the Dog’s, in the sea in the snowing bottom.
Go find God in the nights, the clouds too.
When can it stop this big circle at the skull
oh Neal; there are men, things outside to do.
Great huge tombs of Activity
in the desert of Africa of the heart,
The black angels, the women in bed
with their beautiful arms open for you
in their youth, some tenderness
Begging in the same shroud.
The big clouds of new continents,
O foot tired in climes so mysterious,
Don�
��t go down the otherside for nothing.
1952?
Old buddy aint you gonna stay by me?
Didnt we say I’d die by a lonesome tree
And you come and dont cut me down
But I’m lying as I be
Under a deathsome tree
Under a headache cross
Under a powerful boss
Under a hoss
(my kingdom for a hoss
a hoss
fork a hoss and head
for ole Mexico)
Joe, aint you my buddy thee?
And stay by me, when I fall & die
In the apricot field
And you, blue moon, what you doon
Shining in the sky
With a glass of port wine
In your eye
—Ladies, let fall your drapes
and we’ll have an evening
of interesting rapes
inneresting rapes
1956?
DAYDREAMS FOR GINSBERG
I lie on my back at midnight
hearing the marvelous strange chime
of the clocks, and know it’s mid-
night and in that instant the whole
world swims into sight for me
in the form of beautiful swarm-
ing m u t t a worlds—
everything is happening, shining
Buhudda-lands, bhuti
blazing in faith, I know I’m
forever right & all’s I got to
do (as I hear the ordinary
extant voices of ladies talking
in some kitchen at midnight
oilcloth cups of cocoa
cardore to mump the
rinnegain in his
darlin drain—) i will write
it, all the talk of the world
everywhere in this morning, leav-
ing open parentheses sections
for my own accompanying inner
thoughts—with roars of me
all brain—all world
roaring—vibrating—I put
it down, swiftly, 1,000 words
(of pages) compressed into one second
of time—I’ll be long
robed & long gold haired in
the famous Greek afternoon
of some Greek City
Fame Immortal & they’ll
have to find me where they find
the t h n u p f t of my
shroud bags flying
flag yagging Lucien
Midnight back in their
mouths—Gore Vidal’ll
be amazed, annoyed—
my words’ll be writ in gold
& preserved in libraries like