The Cat
The cat
licks its paw and
lies down in
the bookshelf nook
She
can lie in a
sphinx position
without moving for so
many hours
and then turn her head
to me and
rise and stretch
and turn
her back to me and
lick her paw again as if
no real time had passed
It hasn’t
and she is the sphinx with
all the time in the world
in the desert of her time
The cat
knows where flies die
sees ghosts in motes of air
and shadows in sunbeams
She hears
the music of the spheres and
the hum in the wires of houses
and the hum of the universe
in interstellar spaces
but
prefers domestic places
and the hum of the heater
Simplicity itself and a pleasant poem for cat lovers who recognize the truth.
There may be some great deep meaning here that I miss, but even if I’ve missed it, I can say the poem succeeds with the images of the cat on the bookshelf in a sphinx position, unmoving. When she rises, turning her back to the writer “no real time has past” the cat knows that and the writer learns that too–emphasize the word real. ”she is the sphinx with all the time in the world in the desert of her time.”
“The cat knows where flies die sees ghosts in motes of air and shadows in sunbeams…” she knows the mysteries of the earth.
Then the point:
she hears…the hum in the wires of house and the hum of the universe…
but prefers domestic places and the hum of the heater.
Perhaps in a way humans have the knowledge of cats if we would admit it–we hear the music of the spheres…the hum of the universe and prefer the hum of the heater. Perhaps humans should learn to be satisfied with that–as satisfied as the cat.
Dog
The dog trots freely in the street
and sees reality
and the things he sees
are bigger than himself
and the things he sees
are his reality
Drunks in the doorways
Moons on trees
The dog trots freely thru the street
and the things he sees
are smaller than himself
Fish on newsprint
Ants in holes
Chickens in Chinatown windows
their heads a block away
The dog trots freely in the street
and the things he smells
smell something like himself
The dog trots freely in the street
past puddles and babies
cats and cigars
poolrooms and policemen
He doesn’t hate cops
He merely has no use for them
and he goes past them
and past the dead cows hung up whole
in front of the San Francisco Meat Market
He would rather eat a tender cow
than a tough policeman
though either might do
And he goes past the Romeo Ravioli Factory
and past Coit’s Tower
and past Congressman Doyle of the Unamerican Committee
He’s afraid of Coit’s Tower
but he’s not afraid of Congressman Doyle
although what he hears is very discouraging
very depressing
very absurd
to a sad young dog like himself
to a serious dog like himself
But he has his own free world to live in
His own fleas to eat
He will not be muzzled
Congressman Doyle is just another
fire hydrant
to him
The dog trots freely in the street
and has his own dog’s life to live
and to think about
and to reflect upon
touching and tasting and testing everything
investigating everything
without benefit of perjury
a real realist
with a real tale to tell
and a real tail to tell it with
a real live
barking democratic dog
engaged in real free enterprise
with something to say
about reality
and how to see it
and how to hear it
with his head cocked sideways
at streetcorners
as if he is just about to have
his picture taken
for Victor Records
listening for
His Master’s Voice
and looking
like a living questionmark
into the
great gramophone
of puzzling existence
with its wondrous hollow horn
which always seems
just about to spout forth
some Victorious answer
to everything
Ferlinghetti could have named this poem “Man” and described a human walking the streets, registering the sounds, but then man’s talent for jealousies and judgments would have clouded the senses. How long do you think we are capable of “trotting freely” in our streets without measuring ourselves against others, desiring a change in ourselves or in others? This is all very Zen like to me.
The dog’s perception of his world is purely sensory–just like ours, I add–We see things bigger than ourselves, smaller than ourselves, we smell things like ourselves, we are discouraged, depressed, saddened by leaders who do stupid things. and we fret and stew, analyze and mostly react in ways that are harmful to ourselves. We need to learn to trot free.
Diane McCormick
Ferlinghetti Dreams of a New Beginning
I had never heard of Lawrence Ferlinghetti before my journey to discover the Beats, a movement I somehow missed in earlier literary travels. After reading several Beat poets, though, at times it’s difficult to see why Ferlinghetti is grouped with the Beats at all. In terms of style they seem to have very little in common, though each at times slips into some Whitmanesque lines.
In fact, in a recent interview Ferlinghetti said he didn’t consider himself a Beat poet. He was quoted as saying, “You know he [Ginsberg] used to say, ‘First thought, best thought?’ I’d say, ‘First thought, worse thought.’ We went about writing entirely differently. But he was my friend.”
There are, though, several reasons why he is associated with the Beats. As co-founder of City Lights Press he published the Beats when it was risky to do so. Second, he was clearly a friend of the Beats, and his ideas are often similar. "My poetics are different but my politics are in solidarity," he’s quoted as saying. "The Beats cleared the way for everybody else. Anti-materialist, anti-war, the first articulation of ecological consciousness: All of that was the Beats.”
The poems I’m discussing today come from Wild Dreams of a New Beginning, poems published from 1974-1979. I found a number of poems that I liked in the section of Wild Dreams of a New Beginning called Who Are We Now? My favorite poems, though, are two where he considers the paintings of two famous painters. (If you click on the titles of the poems they will take you to online shots of related paintings.)
Monet never knew
he was painting his ‘Lilies’ for
a lady from the Chicago Art Institute
who went to France and filmed
today’s lilies
by the’Bridge at Giverny’
a leaf afloat among them
the film of which now flickers
at the entrance to his framed visions
with a Debussy piano soundtrack
flooding with a new fluorescence (fleur-essence?)
the rooms and rooms
of waterlilies
Monet caught a Cloud in a Pond
in 1903
and got a first glimpse
of its lilies
and for twenty years returned
again and again to paint them
which now gives us the impression
that he floated thru life on them
and their reflections
which he also didn’t know
we would have occasion
to reflect upon
Anymore than he could know
that John Cage would be playing a
‘Cello with Melody-driven Electronics’
tonight at the University of Chicago
And making those Lilies shudder and shed
black light
There seems little in this poem that needs elucidation, at least not nearly as much as the world “elucidation,” and I like that. However, the idea that Monet “floated thru life on them and their reflections,” suggesting that there is something mystical itself about the source of the art is an appealing idea. How shameful, then, that people exploit these mystical forces, thus demeaning the forces and the artist that first perceived them.
I was perhaps even more inspired by Ferlinghetti’s poem “The ‘Moving Waters’ of Gustav Klimt” because I had never heard of Klimt before, or at least I didn’t remember him. I do, however, like the Art Decco movement, and I enjoyed his paintings once I found them.
The ‘Moving Waters’ of Gustav Klimt
Who are they then
these women in this painting
seen so, deeply long ago
Models he slept with
or lovers or others
he came upon
catching them as they were
back then
dreamt sleepers
on moving waters
eyes wide open
purple hair streaming
over alabaster bodies
in lavender currents
Dark skein of hair blown back
from a darkened face
an arm flung out
a mouth half open
a hand
cupping its own breast
rapt dreamers
or stoned realists
drifting motionless
lost sisters or
women-in-love
with themselves or others
pale bodies wrapt
in the night of women
lapt in light
in ground swells of
dreamt desire
dreamt delight
Still strangers to us
yet not
strangers
in that first night
in which we lose ourselves
And know each other
Again, this poem, like many of Ferlinghetti’s poems, doesn’t seem to need much interpretation, but he is still able to take us beyond the paintings themselves and add another dimension to them. We understand, for a moment, that we, like the subjects of the paintings, are caught up in that moment when we are “Still strangers to us/yet not/ strangers/ in that first night/ in which we lose ourselves/ And know each other.”
Ferlinghetti has the ability to focus the reader’s attention on a subject clearly and precisely, so that the reader sees it more clearly, or for the first time, in a new light.
Ginsberg Rocks the World of Poetry
Although Jack Kerouac is generally considered the founder of the Beats, Allen Ginsberg may well be its most famous member. For better or for worst, Allen Ginsberg seems to me to be the Elvis Presley of modern poetry. Too often while reading Allen Ginsberg: Selected Poems 1947 to 1995, I felt like I was watching VH1’s show “Behind the Rock Stars,” for Ginsberg’s life often seems both meteoric and self destructive.
At its best, this 443 page tome allows you to see all aspects of Ginsberg’s life, the good, the bad, and, certainly, most certainly, the ugly. I’ve tried to pick out some of my favorite poems to discuss here, but, for me, the bad probably outweighs the good.
For awhile, I played with the idea of including some of what I consider Ginsberg’s worst poems here simply to show what you have to wade through to find the nuggets that are just as surely to be found here. In the end, though, I decided not to include those poems in order to avoid the enormous number of Google hits that would inevitably follow such poems, but you can go here
to get a sample of what I mean. I refuse to cite them with the offending words deleted or ***!# substituted because that would deny to Ginsberg one of the greatest virtues of this work: his honesty. But, judging from the number of weird hits I received after discussing Anne Sexton’s poetry, I might get really depressed if I suddenly became very popular simply because I quoted many of Ginsberg’s bad poems unexpurgated.
No matter how you feel about this work, though, you cannot deny its honesty and its portrayal of a complex, and at times tortured, individual seeking personal recognition and redemption, as he readily admits in:
Ego Confession
I want to be known as the most brilliant man in America
Introduced to Gyalwa Karmapa heir of the Whispered Transmission
Crazy Wisdom Practice Lineage
as the secret young wise man who visited him and winked anonymously
decade ago in Gangtok
Prepared the way for Dharma in America without mentioning Dharma–
scribbled laughter
Who saw Blake and abandoned God
To whom the Messianic Fink sent messages darkest hour sleeping on steel
sheets “somewhere in the Federal Prison system” weathermen
got no Moscow Gold
who went backstage to Cecil Taylor serious chat chord structure & Time in
a nightclub
who fucked a rose-lipped rock star in a tiny bedroom slum watched by a
statue of Vajrasattva–
and overthrew the CIA with a silent thought
Old Bohemians many years hence in Viennese beergardens’ll recall
his many young lovers with astonishing faces and iron breasts
gnostic apparatus and magical observation of rainbow-lit spiderwebs
extraordinary cooking, lung stew & Spaghetti a la Vongole and recipe for
salad dressing 3 parts oil one part vinegar much garlic and honey a
spoonful
his extraordinary ego, at service of Dharma and completely empty
unafraid of its own self’s spectre
parroting gossip of gurus and geniuses famous for their reticence
Who sang a blues made rock stars weep and moved an old black guitarist to
laughter in Memphis
I want to be the spectacle of Poesy triumphant over trickery of the world
Omniscient breathing its own breath thru tear gas spy hallucination
whose common sense astonished gaga Gurus and rich Artistes
who called the justice department & threaten’d to Blow the Whistle
Stopt Wars, turned back petrochemical Industries’ Captains to grieve &
groan in bed
Chopped wood, built forest houses & established farms
distributed monies to poor poets & nourished imaginative genius of the
land
Sat silent in jazz roar writing poetry with an ink pen
wasn’t afraid of God or Death after his 48th year
let his brain turn to water under Laughing Gas his gold molar pulled by
futuristic dentists
Seamen knew ocean’s surface a year
carpenter later learned bevel and mattock
son, conversed with elder Pound & treated his father gently
–All empty all for show, all for the sake of Poesy
to set surpassing example of sanity as measure for late generations
Exemplify Muse Power to the young avert future suicide
accepting his own lie & the gaps between lies with equal good humor
Solitary in worlds full of insects & singing birds all solitary
–who had no subject but himself in many disguises
some outside his own body including empty air-filled space forests &
cities
Even climbed mountains to create his mountain, with ice ax & crampons & ropes, over Glaciers
San Francisco, October 1974
Although the humor in this poem, as in much of his poetry, helps to blunt the sheer egotism, there’s no denying, nor need there be, that Ginsberg’s desire for fame is an inextricable part of this volume, as also indicated by the constant name-dropping in the work. Of course, the fact that he is able to drop such names casually does indicate the extent of his fame. He is a poet “star,” though I’m not sure that makes him the “most brilliant man in America,” and I’m positive it doesn’t make him the kind of religious prophet suggested in the line “Prepared the way for Dharma in America,” for he is no St. John the Baptist. He may well have done some of the things suggested in the next few lines, and they may help to account for his fame and popularity, but it is, again, unfortunately, in my opinion, an exaggeration to claim that he “overthrew the CIA with a silent thought.”
I can well believe he sang a blues song that made a black guitarist laugh, but unfortunately Poesy still isn’t “triumphant over trickery of the world.” Nor has it ever managed to stop a war, though “tis often used to celebrate them. Because of his fame, Ginsberg may well “Exemplify Muse Power to the young,” but, on reflection, that may not necessarily be a good thing.
The truest thing about this poem seems to be that Ginsberg does seem to accept “his own lie & the gaps between lies with equal good humor” and his poetry has “no subject but himself in many disguises.”
Another poem I like is “Returning to the Country for a Brief Visit.” It’s an interesting reflection on death, a re-occurring theme in Ginsberg’s later poems.
Returning to the Country for a Brief Visit
Annotations to Amitendranath Tagore’s Sung Poetry
“In later days, remembering this I shall certainly go mad.”
Reading Sung poems, I think of my poems to Neal
dead few years now, Jack underground
invisible–their faces rise in my mind.
Did I write truthfully of them? In later times
I saw them little, not much difference they’re dead.
They live in books and memory, strong as on earth.
“I do not know who is hoarding all this rare work. ”
Old One the dog stretches stiff legged,
soon he’ll be underground. Spring’s first fat bee
buzzes yellow over the new grass and dead leaves.
What’s this little brown insect walking zigzag
across the sunny white page of Su Tung-p’o’s poem?
Fly away, tiny mite, even your life is tender–
I lift the book and blow you into the dazzling void.
“You live apart on rivers and seas. . . ”
You live in apartments by rivers and seas
Spring comes, waters flow murky, the salt wave’s covered with oily dung
Sun rises, smokestacks cover the roofs with black mist
winds blow, city skies arc clear blue all afternoon
but at night the full moon hesitates behind brick.
How will all these millions of people worship the Great Mother?
When all these millions of people die will they recognize the Great Father?
Cherry Valley April 20,1973
Apparently having gained some new kind of insight, Ginsberg now wonders if his earlier ideas on death were “true.” How do we write “truthfully” about people who have just died? Only a powerful insight allows us to see death “truthfully.” Now he believes that, in a literary sense, Neal and Jack are still alive because their memory is strong.
The second section takes an even more objective look at a beloved animal, who’ll soon “be underground.” This image is contrasted with an image of “spring’s first fat bee,” an image of new life, of life reborn after winter. Interestingly enough, in the image of a “tiny mite” the narrator talks about how even it’s life “is tender.” How do we reconcile this with the seemingly indifference to Neal and Jack’s demise in the first section? Perhaps the clue comes from the phrase “the dazzling void.” The combination of “dazzling” and “void” suggests that Ginsberg has some new insight into death that he did not have in earlier epitaphs he has written for Neal Cassady.
But this apparent acceptance of death is contrasted with the image of people alienated from their world, an alienation that suggests that they will also be alienated after death. In this stanza the pollution of the world somehow is extended into the afterlife. If one lacks harmony with life, is there any chance of harmony after death? Ginsberg may feel he is ready for the dazzling void, but he doubts that most people are.
Personally, I found far fewer poems that I liked in the last years of Ginsberg’s writings. It seems that songs became much more important to Ginsberg, and though I don’t read enough music to know what they would sound like if played, I do know that the lyrics leave much to be desired in my mind.
However, I was quite fond of some additional stanzas that Ginsberg wrote for the very traditional song, “New Stanzas for Amazing Grace:”
New Stanzas for Amazing Grace
I dreamed I dwelled in a homeless place
Where I was lost alone
Folk looked right through me into space
And passed with eyes of stone
O homeless hand on many a street
Accept this change from me
A friendly smile or word is sweet
As fearless charity
Woe workingman who hears the cry
And cannot spare a dime
Nor look into a homeless eye
Afraid to give the time
So rich or poor no gold to talk
A smile on your face
The homeless ones where you may walk
Receive amazing grace
I dreamed I dwelled in a homeless place
Where I was lost alone
Folk looked right through me into space
And passed with eyes of stone
April 2, 1994
The alienation Ginsberg describes here is one that we can all identify with at some point in our life. Who hasn’t been “passed with eyes of stone,” unaware of you or the trials you are going through at that moment. Even a smile on someone else’s face, the mere recognition of you as a fellow human, may allow you to receive “amazing grace,” the amazing grace bestowed by human sympathy.
As you can probably tell if you stuck with this review this far, Ginsberg isn’t my favorite modern poet. There are some excellent poems in this volume, ones I don’t have the time to cover here, but you have to work really hard to separate the wheat from the chaff, and you end up with a lot more chaff than wheat. I suspect that you may well be better off to limiting your reading to anthologies where others have already done the thrashing for you.
However, if, like me, you’ve lived a relatively sheltered life and haven’t met many people like Allen Ginsberg, it is fascinating to explore his complex personality through his poems. It’s nearly impossible not to gain some insight and satisfaction simply from trying to figure out what drives him.
It’s also possible to gain some insights into what the Beats bring to modern poetry that made them so popular. Most obviously, they bring shock value. Ginsberg’s graphic description of homosexual lust was definitely a first for serious poets. Unfortunately, it’s a first I would have preferred to miss. I’ve reconciled myself to the idea that Whitman may well have been gay, but at least he had the good sense not to write about it. I have no desire to read about anyone’s sex life, much less that of a gay man’s sexual life with other men.
Ginsberg certainly pushed the envelope of “confessional” poetry much further than it has been pushed before. There are probably no longer any limits to what can be written about.
On a more positive note, Ginsberg brings a refreshing informality that is often missing in much of modern poetry. For the Beats, poetry seems to be introduced as a part of everyday life, not just reserved for special moments.
Because of their “immediacy,” Beats seldom seem to polish their poetry and retain poems that many poets would discard as rough drafts or failed attempts. This willingness to share poems that are less than perfect may well encourage others to attempt to write their own poetry.
And that’s certainly a good thing.
Ginsberg’s Kadish Prayer
According to Jewish tradition, in the presence of a minyon (10 adult men) the child of a dead parent recites the Kaddish every day for 11 months to reaffirm his faith in God after the loss of a parent. One month is dropped from the 12 months required for the most wicked of souls to be purified before entering The World to Come to show that the deceased is not the most wicked. The recitation of this prayer demonstrates to God what a good parent the child had to be able to praise God during a period of mourning.
Mourner’s Kaddish
(Congregation recites italicized lines)
May His great Name grow exalted and sanctified.
Amen.
in the world that He created as he willed.
May He give reign to His kingship in your lifetimes and in your days,
and in the lifetimes of the entire Family of Israel,
swiftly and soon.
Amen. Amen. May His great Name be blessed forever and ever.
May His great Name be blessed forever and ever.
Blessed, praised, glorified, exalted, extolled,
mighty, upraised, and lauded be the Name of the holy One, Blessed is He
Blessed is He
beyond any blessing and song,
praise and consolation that are uttered in the world.
Amen. Amen.
May there be abundant peace from heaven, and life
upon us and upon all Israel.
Amen. Amen.
He Who makes peace in His heights, may He make peace,
upon us and upon all Israel.
Amen. Amen.
“Kadish,” recounting his mother’s life and insanity, has to be accepted as one of Allen Ginsberg’s finest poems, a most personal, honest chronology of a child’s struggle to understand and help his parent, a truthful, realistic, unsentimental memory of his mother. As in all good poetry there is a lesson included for us all.
Ginsberg never is repelled by his mother’s illness, struggles to do as she wishes, helps her, attempts to understand her insanity as a spiritual condition rather than a medical one. Naomi Ginsberg was 62 years old when she died.
The poem is written in five parts: the Narrative, Hymmnn, Lament, Litany and Fugue.
In the Narrative, Ginsberg chronicles in 1959 how he began to write the poem. He and his friend Zev Putterman now living in Berkeley recall that at his mother Naomi’s funeral three years earlier, which Ginsberg did not attend, the Kaddish was not recited because not enough males were in attendance. Under the influence of hard drugs and the music of Ray Charles, Ginsberg and Putterman decide to read the Kaddish for his mother. New Jersey and Greystone Mental Hospital and Naomi’s inability to recognize him must have seemed episodes from another life for Ginsberg. He had just published “Howl,” receiving much attention for his work; he was living in Berkeley surrounded by other writers, and he had just fallen in love with poet Peter Orlovsky who would remain a lover and close friend for three decades although the relationship was not a monogamous one.
I’ve been up all night, talking, talking, reading the Kaddish
aloud, listening to Ray Charles blues shout blind
on the phonograph
the rhythm, the rhythm,–and your memory in my heart three
years after–
And read Adonais’ last triumphant stanzas aloud–wept,
realizing how we suffer–
His memories take him on a walk through the old New York neighborhood of Lower East Side Manhattan
where you walked 50 years ago, little girl–from Russia,
eating the first poisonous tomatoes of America–frightened
on the dock–then struggling in the crowds of Orchard Street
toward what? toward Newark–toward candy store, first
home-made sodas of the century, hand-churned ice cream
in backroom on musty brownfloor boards–
Toward education marriage nervous breakdown, operation,
teaching school, and learning to be mad, in a dream–
what is this life?
What came is gone forever every time–…
Death let you out,…
All the accumulations of life, that wear us out…
The second part of the Narrative reviews Naomi’s awful mental illness. She had had a “nervous breakdown” before Allen was born, been treated and improved, but in Allen’s childhood she descended into paranoia and schizophrenia, receiving treatment and hospitalization the rest of her life. Finally a lobotomy, now outlawed, was performed on Naomi:
…electrical shocks…
By long nites as a child in Paterson apartment, watching over your
nervousness–you were fat–your next move–
by that afternoon I stayed home from school to take care of you–
once and for all–when I vowed forever that once man disagreed
with my opinion of the cosmos, I was lost–
From the last line one also learns much about Allen.
The frightening details of paranoia jump from the page
spied a mystical assassin from Newark…
and you covered your nose with motheaten fur collar, gas mask
against poison sneaked into downtown atmosphere,
sprayed by Grandma–
And was the driver of the cheesebox Public Service bus
a member of the gang? You shuddered at his face, I could
hardly get you on–to New York, very Times Square, to grab
another Greyhound where we hung around 2 hours fighting
invisible bugs and jewish sickness–breeze poisoned
by Roosevelt…
The bus ride for a 12 year old and his mother is the search for a rest home which will shelter Naomi from her in-laws, especially her mother-in-law Buba, and her husband, Louis, and doctors who she believed had implanted
3 big sticks up my back…they poisoned me, they want
to see me dead–3 big sticks, 3 big sticks
“The Bitch! Old Grandma! Last week I saw her, dress in pants
like an old man, with a sack on her back, climbing up the brick side
of the apartment
On the fire escape, with poison germs, to throw on me–at night–
maybe Louis is helping her–he’s under her power
Allen returns home after leaving his mother at a rest home in Lakewood. His father is understandably upset with him for leaving Naomi.
Louis was worried. How could I be so–didn’t I think? I shouldn’t
have left her. Mad in Lakewood. Call the Doctor.
A passage about Ginsberg’s first homosexual love follows as he reminisces about
R–my high school mind hero, jewish boy who came a doctor later
I later laying down life for him, moved to Manhattan–
followed him to college–Prayed on ferry to help mankind
if admitted–vowed, the day I journeyed to Entrance Exam–
by being honest revolutionary labor lawyer–would train for that–
inspired by Sacco Vanzetti, Norman Thomas, Debs, Altgeld,
Sandburg, Poe–Little Blue Books. I wanted to be President,
or Senator.
ignorant woe–later dreams of kneeling by R’s shocked
knees declaring my love of 1941–What sweetness he’d have
shown me, tho, that I’d wished him & despaired–first love–
crush–
Later a mortal avalanche whole mountains of homosexuality.
Soon Naomi must be retrieved from the Lakewood rest home
she’d gone mad–Naomi hiding under the bed screaming
bugs of Mussolini–Help! Louis! Buba! Fascists! Death–
the landlady frightened
The wild Naomi, screaming for a blood transfusion, is not allowed on the bus back to New York, but eventually she is taken to the doctor who admits her to Greystone, a large mental hospital in New Jersey where she remains for three years.
Take me home–I went alone sometime looking
for the lost Naomi, taking Shock–and I’d say, “No, you’re crazy
Mama,–Trust the Drs.”–
Ginsberg recounts the life his older brother Eugene begins–his desire to be a lawyer sidelined as he becomes a teach at Montclair Teachers College
just found the Scream of Naomi on his failure doorstep…
No love since Naomi screamed–since 1923?–now
lost in Greystone ward–new shock for her–Electricity,
following the 40 Insulin.
And Metrazol had made her fat.
By Naomi’s next return home, Louis is in debt. Naomi wanders the house, not remembering her lost Mahogany dining room set sold to the junk man. She goes to the backroom to nap, Allen lays beside her
‘Don’t be afraid of me because I’m just coming back home
from the mental hospital–I’m your mother–’
Poor love, lost–a fear–I lay there–Said, ‘I love you Naomi’–
stiff, next to her arm. I would have cried, was this the comfortless
lone union?–
Nervous, and she got up soon.
But being at home is no salvation.
…Roosevelt should know her case, she told me–Afraid
to kill her, now, that the government knew their names–
traced back to Hitler–wanted to leave Louis’ house forever.
…Once locked herself in with razor or iodine–could hear
her cough in tears at sink–Lou broke through glass green
painted door, we pulled her out to the bedroom…
later she ran away to the Bronx to her sister Elanor. And there’s
another saga of late Naomi in New York.
Naomi is not without humor sometimes…
‘and when we die we become an onion, a cabbage, a carrot,
or a squash, a vegetable…
Yesterday I saw God…he has a cheap cabin in the country,
like Monroe, N.Y. the chicken farms in the wood. He was
a lonely old man with a white beard.
I cooked supper for him. I made him a nice supper–lentil
soup, vegetable, bread & butter,–miltz–he sat down
at the table and ate, he was sad.
‘I told him, Look at all those fightings and killing down there,
What’s the matter? Why don’t you put a stop to it?
‘I try, he said–that’s all he could do, he looked tired. He’s
a bachelor so long, and he likes lentil soup.’
Allen remembers experiencing a moment of his mother’s sexuality. The telling of the incident is not colored by anger or repulsion but by a wonder at the possibility of some spiritual knowledge to be gained from the act.
One time I thought she was trying to make me come lay her–
flirting to herself at sink…
later revolted a little, not much–seemed perhaps a good idea
to try–know the Monster of the Beginning Womb–Perhaps–
that way. Would she care? She needs a lover.
Naomi feels she must leave her own home to move in with her sister Elanor in the Bronx. The journey through madness continues at Elanor’s house and Naomi kicks her sister.
‘Elanor is the worst spy! She’s taking orders!’
Eventually Louis wants a divorce so he can remarry, Naomi “goes to the hospital forever” and suffers a stroke.
One hand stiff–heaviness of forties & menopause reduced
by one heart stroke, lame now–wrinkles—a scar on her head,
the lobotomy–ruin, the hand dipping downwards to death–
Allen’s last visit:
I came back she yelled more–they led her away–’You’re
not Allen–’ I watched her face–but she passed by me, not looking–
Opened the door to the ward,–she went thru without a glance
back, quiet suddenly–I stared out–she looked old–the verge
of the grave–’All the Horror!’
By the next year, Ginsberg is in Berkeley. Surrounded by Orlovsky and other friends he receives a telegram from Gene that Naomi is dead. He also receives a letter Naomi wrote:
‘The key is in the window, the key is in the sunlight at the window–
I have the key–Get married Allen don’t take drugs–the key
is in the bars, in the sunlight in the window.
Love,
your mother
Pressed between the layers of her insanity is the part of her which will always be a mother: “Get married Allen don’t take drugs.”
Part II, Hymmnn is a short piece reminiscent of the Beatitudes and similar to the Footnote to “Howl” in which the word “holy” is chanted, ending with “Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul!”
Hymmnn ends
Blessed be He who builds Heaven in Darkness! Blessed Blessed Blessed
be He! Blessed be He! Blessed be Death on us All!
“Howl” and “Kaddish” both after cataloging the sufferings and defeats human beings face–in “Howl” it’s the destruction of youthful seekers of vision, in “Kaddish” it’s the destruction of his mother by insanity–end with an optimistic view of the holiness and blessedness of mankind. Critics often ignore this aspect of Ginsberg’s writing, focusing and commenting on what appeared obscene or seditious in his work.
The Lament holds the motivation for Ginsberg’s desire to memorialize Naomi as he recounts what he longs now not to have forgotten
Only to have not forgotten the beginning in which she drank
cheap sodas in the morgues of Newark,
only to have seen her weeping on gray tables in long wards
of her universe
only to have known the weird ideas of Hitler at the door, the wires
in her head, the three big sticks…
only to have come to that dark night on iron bed by stroke
when the sun gone down on Long Island
and the vast Atlantic roars outside the great call of Being
to its own
to come back out of the Nightmare–divided creation–with her head
lain on a pillow of the hospital to die
–in one last glimpse–all Earth one everlasting Light in the familiar
blackout–no tears for this vision…
Then Naomi’s letter becomes clear
But that the key should be left behind–at the window–the key
in the sunlight–to the living–that can take that slice of light in hand–
and turn the door–and look back see Creation glistening
backwards to the same grave, size of universe, size of the tick
of the hospital’s clock on the archway over the white door–
The reminder of God’s good universe, the remembrance, the Creation, the death, the grave the size of the universe symbolized in the size of the tick of the hospital clock on the archway over the white door–a mother’s profound lesson left like a key for her son.
The Litany is a remembrance of his mother in carefully spaced lines, lengthening, shortening
O mother
what have I left out
O mother
what have I forgotten
O mother
farewell
with a long black shoe
farewell
with Communist Party and a broken stocking
farewell…
with your sagging belly
will your fear of Hitler
with your mouth of bad short stories
with you fingers of rotten mandolins
with your arms of fat Paterson porches
with your belly of strikes and smokestacks
with your chin of Trotsky and the Spanish War
with your voice singing for the decaying overbroken workers
with your nose of bad lay with your nose of the smell of the pickles of Newark
with your eyes…
Finally the Fugue, a juxtaposition of Ginsberg’s thoughts at Naomi’s grave and the sound of the caw, caw, caw of the crows
caw caw all year my birth a dream caw caw New York the bus
the broken shoe the vast highschool caw caw all Visions of the Lord
Lord Lord Lord caw caw caw Lord Lord Lord caw caw caw Lord
Allen Ginsberg went on to live at times appearing insane, an insanity promoted in a haze of drugs. Too, Ginsberg had to be influenced by his mother’s insanity, coming to see it as travel into the spiritual, away from the insanity of the culture in which he found himself. By not really being insane, which must be agony for the victim, but by attempting to induce temporary insanity through heavy drug use, Ginsberg and the other Beats hoped to find spiritual purity.
But Ginsberg and the Beats deserve attention for more than just their use of drugs. For the most part they need to be seen as human beings in search of a pure existence above the “getting and spending” trivialities of life. They were the writers who expressed their yearnings, giving their readers some insight into the need to search for the path to enlightenment.
Diane McCormick