Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 195
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dreamed of being a river and sleeping like a river
with whatever comrade would lay on your breast
the little pain of an ignorant leopard.
—Federico Garcia Lorca,
“Oda a Walt Whitman” (adapted by Allen Ginsberg)
Sir Francis Drake Hotel tower, Powell and Sutter Streets, San Francisco, seen from Nob Hill, original motif of Moloch section of Howl, Part II. Photo 1959 by Harry Redl. (See n.p. 139.)
America
154 WOBBLIES: International Workers of the World, strong on Northwest coast, some Anarchist-Buddhist-Populist tinge, primarily lumber and mining workers, pre-World War I activist precursors to organized American labor unions. For “I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night…” see Little Red Song Book.
155 TOM MOONEY: (1882–1942) Labor leader accused of bomb-throwing, 1919 San Francisco Preparedness Day Parade; imprisoned still protesting innocence till pardoned 1939 by Governor Earl Warren; cause celebre in left-wing populist circles worldwide.
155 SACCO & VANZETTI: Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Italian-American anarchists convicted of robbery and murder, executed in Massachusetts, 1927, after international protest. Vanzetti’s last speech to the court: “I found myself compelled to fight back from my eyes the tears, and quanch my heart trobling to my throat to not weep before him. But Sacco’s name will live in the hearts of the people when your name, your laws, institutions and your false god are but a dim rememoring of a cursed past in which man was wolf to the man.” And a letter to his son, April 1927: “If it had not been for this thing I might have live out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have die unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man’s understanding of man, as now we do by accident. … Our words—our lives—our pains: nothing. The taking of our lives—lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler—all! That last moment, belongs to us—that agony is our triumph.”
155 SCOTTSBORO BOYS: Nine black youths arrested 1931 by mob in Paint Rock, Alabama, jailed in Scottsboro, set up and sentenced to death for alleged train rape of two white girls, despite popular belief in their innocence. Their cause focused international attention on Southern U.S. legal injustice and racial discrimination. Supreme Court reversed convictions twice, setting landmark precedents for adequate counsel representation and fair race-balanced juries.
155 SCOTT NEARING: (1883–1983) Sociology professor bounced from Academe for anti-World War I views, Socialist congressional candidate 1919, staunch pro-Soviet historian and autobiographer. In old age, Nearing evolved into “new age” counterculture role model with publication of Living the Good Life (pioneering, building, organic gardening, cooperation and vegetarian living on a self-subsistent Vermont homestead; working plans for a twenty-year project), 1954; and The Maple Sugar Book (account of the art and history of sugaring; practical details for modern sugar-making; remarks on pioneering as a way of living in the twentieth century), 1950; both coau-thored with Helen Nearing (reprint ed., New York: Schocken Books, 1970, 1971).
155 MOTHER BLOOR: Ella Reeve Bloor (1862–1951) Communist leader, writer, traveling union strike organizer and speechmaker.
155 EWIG-WEIBLICHE: (German) Eternal feminine.
155 ISRAEL AMTER: (1881–1954) A leading American Communist, Yiddish part of movement, traveling orator, ran for N.Y. governor 1930s.
Fragment 1956
157 TOMBS: New York City jailhouse.
Afternoon Seattle
158 MANDALA: Map of psychological universe, generally Hindu-Buddhist. See Time Wheel Mandala, p. 590.
158 SNYDER: Gary Snyder (b. 1930) Naturalist-woodsman, poet, early U.S. student of Zen, hitchhiked Northwest with author 1956, as described in poem. Prototype for Kerouac’s Dharma Bums hero.
158 GREEN PARROT THEATER: First Avenue vaudeville movie playhouse, whose marquee was celebrated for Art Nouveau design and extravagant variety of neon colors in tail of its green parrot insignia. At time of poem, the 1930s Nelson Eddy-Jeanette MacDonald movie Maytime was rerun. See Maytime song quotes, “Iron Horse.”
158 FRANK H. LITTLE: His dry mummy stood in a glass case in a curio shop on Seattle waterfront, as described.
IV
REALITY SANDWICHES: EUROPE! EUROPE!
(1957–1959)
To Aunt Rose
193 THE ATTIC OF THE PAST AND EVERLASTING MINUTE: Books of lyric poetry by the author’s father, Louis Ginsberg (1896–1976). The Everlasting Minute was published 1937 by Horace Liveright, N.Y. Certain poems were anthologized in various editions of Louis Untermeyer’s standard anthology Modern American and British Poetry.
Laughing Gas
198 SATORI: (Japanese) Sudden flash of enlightenment, awakening a glimpse of ordinary mind, often result of prolonged Zazen meditation practice. See also opening pages of Kerouac, Satori in Paris (New York: Grove Press, 1966). (There are various kinds of Satori: it is believed that a Zen master can recognize what kind and how profound, long lasting, or life-changing some person’s Satori is.—P.W.)
198 SUTRAS: Buddhist discourses or dialogues, joining teacher and student in transmission of Dharma, or doctrine, over generations.
201 CZARDAS: East European dance, wildly spirited.
202 SHERMAN ADAMS: Assistant to President Eisenhower, who did resign; involved in minor White House scandal for accepting fur coat as gift.
V
KADDISH AND RELATED POEMS
(1959–1960)
Kaddish
217 FIRST POISONOUS TOMATOES OF AMERICA: Russian immigrants to U.S. at turn of the century had not seen tomatoes; some believed them poisonous.
218 YPSL: Young People’s Socialist League.
221 GRAF ZEPPELIN: Refers to giant hydrogen-inflated German airship Hindenburg, destroyed in flames with 36 deaths while mooring at Lakehurst, N.J., May 6, 1937, arrived on its first transatlantic crossing.
222 PARCAE: The Three Fates: goddess Clotho, spinning thread of life; Lachesis, holding and fixing length; and Atropos, whose shears cut thread’s end.
222 THE GREEN TABLE: German Jooss Ballet’s 1930s classic, wherein warmonger capitalists in black tie and tails pirouette round long green table at diplomatic conference, arranging mobilization, combat, arms profit, refugee fate and division of spoils, with Death figure dancing in foreground throughout eight-scene parable WWI.
222 DEBS: Eugene Victor Debs (1855–1926) Rail union organizer, founder IWW, “one big union,” Socialist presidential candidate 1900–1920, ran from Atlanta penitentiary during ten-year sentence under so-called Espionage Act for speech denouncing U.S. entry into WWI; received nearly 1 million votes 1920.
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