I’ve been on a beat reading binge lately. I do this every now and again. I think it started when I read an essay [.pdf] comparing Sylvia Plath’s Bell Jar with Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, and finally seeing the 2011 Walter Salles movie.
I then read a biography of Neal Cassady and Carolyn Cassady’s Off the Road and on and on. I’d really like to read this book about LuAnne Henderson – MaryLou in On the Road.
However the revelation this time was Big Sur… I thought I’d read it but I can’t have as it is just devastating. A term that sounds dramatic, but really I was so moved by Kerouac’s story. The enormity of it perhaps. There is a moment when Jack, feeling positive, takes a “huge deep Yogic breath” on the beach but instead of sea air is overcome with “a horror of an eternal condition of sick mortality…I see myself as doomed, pitiful“
It’s worth a read
I have also been quietly working on a long-time project to be able to recite Ginsberg’s Howl. To this ended I follow @howltweeter on twitter which recites the poem endlessly in small chunks.
I have also been working on simply noticing
I first read Ginsberg’s Howl when I was 13. I had to get Pauls Book Arcade in Hamilton to specially import the edition printed by City Lights Books in San Francisco.
The poem gave me a wallop as I did not know poetry could be so much about contemporary life in all its crazed and beautiful reality. Someone took my copy and I have never replaced it but I re-read the poem again last week, and Ginsberg’s Kaddish also, and they are every bit as overwhelming as when I first read them.
Incidentally, if you hear recordings of Ginsberg reading either of these poems it is immediately obvious that the metre of the lines is connected both with the way he speaks and his knowledge of Hebrew.
What a great introduction to Howl! I don’t think I’ll ever recite HOWL out loud. I could never do it justice and it’s nearly 20 years since I studied Hebrew (from an Anglican nun in Christchurch).
Thanks for reading & for ytour comment Ron
Thanks Ron – 1970 Leith Valley Dunedin – Me at Dunedin SFA and ‘On The Road’ – with Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg University Otago Poetry 1970 – What inspirational words -have 3 graphite drawings of Allen along with James Baxter!! Thanks for the memories!! Cheers and bestest Diana