Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 196

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Naomi, Allen, and Louis Ginsberg, New York World’s Fair, June 15, 1940.

222 ALTGELD: John P. Altgeld (1847–1902) First Democratic governor of Illinois (1892–1896) since Civil War. Pardoned surviving anarchists of 1886 Haymarket Riots, initiated prison reform, protected laboring women and reformed child labor laws, opposed use of fed troops to suppress RR strikes, incorruptible, rich entering governorship, which he left penniless. See Vachel Lindsay’s poem “The Eagle That Is Forgotten”: “Sleep softly … eagle forgotten … under the stone. Time has its way with you there, and clay has its own. / ‘We have buried him now,’ thought his foes, and in secret rejoiced … / Sleep on, O brave hearted, O wise man, that kindled the flame— / To live in mankind is far more than to live in a name …”—Vachel Lindsay, Collected Poems (New York: Macmillan, 1925).

Hindenberg Explosion. (See n.p. 221.) The Bettmann Archive, Inc.

222 LITTLE BLUE BOOKS: Tiny blue-covered booklets, first mass-market paperbacks in U.S., freethinking content, distributed from immigrant socialist town Girard, southeast Kansas, by E. Haldeman-Julius (1889–1951), whose mission was to educate the masses by offering great literature at cheapest price, including all Shakespeare, much Oscar Wilde, Tom Paine, Clarence Darrow, Upton Sinclair, the agnostic orator Robert Ingersoll, and Mark Twain. For publishing The FBI—The Basis of an American Police State, The Alarming Methods of J. Edgar Hoover, by Clifton Bennett, 1948, Haldeman-Julius was hounded by FBI; withdrew The Black International, by Joseph McCabe, 20-pamphlet series exposing relation between Roman Catholic Church and fascist Axis.

224 ZHDANOV: Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov (1896–1948) Bolshevik Central Committee Secy, Politburo member, etc., later noted for “anticosmopolitan” chauvinistic pronouncements, 1946, as Stalin’s literary and cultural affairs chief. “Doctors’ Plot” accusations that ten Jewish Kremlin physicians were responsible for the death of Zhdanov and other high military figures signaled a purging of the Party in the year preceding Stalin’s death in 1953.

225 METRAZOL: Used with insulin for shock treatment in common but now abandoned mental therapy experiments.

225 STENKA RAZIN: Russian song, name of folk-heroic Cossack river pirate, tortured and killed in Moscow in 1671.

226 WORKMEN’S CIRCLE: Newark-area Jewish immigrants’ Socialist community service organization.

227 YISBORACH … B’RICH HU: Heart of Kaddish prayer for the dead; for translation see lines 1–2, “Hymmnn” section of Kaddish.

229 BUBA: (Yiddish) Grandmother.

229 SHEMA Y’ISRAEL: (Hebrew) Listen, O Israel!

229 SRUL AVRUM: (Hebrew) Israel Abraham, equivalent to Irwin Allen, names on the author’s birth certificate.

231 CAMP NICHT-GEDEIGET: (Yiddish) Camp “No Worry,” near Monroe, N.Y., summer settlement used by left-wing families, 1930s.

Mescaline

236 MESCALINE: Active psychedelic ingredient in peyote cactus, Southwest Indian religious-vision use. See Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception (New York: Harper & Row, 1970).

Lysergic Acid

239 LYSERGIC ACID: Synthetic psychoactive chemical with which author first experimented at Mental Research Institute, Palo Alto, California, whence poem is dated.

240 GHOST TRAP: A multicolor-stringed wool antenna, to trap stupid ghosts, used during LSD experiments at Stanford Mental Research Institute.

240 ELEPHANT MANDALA: A picture of the universe borrowed by the author from Prof. Frederic Spiegelberg for study during a Lysergic Acid vision and described in section six of the accompanying poem. The mandala and various Ghost Traps—see section five—were brought by Prof. Spiegelberg from a monastery in Sikkim. He writes: “The inscription consists mainly of Mantras, power-words in Sanskirt, which do not carry any mental symbolism, no intellectually expressible meaning, but are supposed to be directly effective as a transforming soul-influence” etc.

To an Old Poet in Peru

247 OLD POET: Martin Adan, pseud. (1908–1985) Refers to his celebrated sonnets in La Rosa de la Espenela, 1939.

247 DISAGUADEROS: Railroad station behind presidential palace in Lima, across from which, in Hotel Comercio, “Old Poet” and “Aether” were written.

247–254 CHANCAY, PACHACAMAC, NASCA: Pre-Incaic cultures of coastal desert Peru. Myriad relics were found by graverobbers opening the sand of these necropolises.

Aether

257 PHILIP WHALEN (1923–2002): San Francisco Renaissance poet and Soto Zen priest, born Northwest 1923, peer among poets Kerouac, Snyder, Welch, McClure, Creeley.

258 ADONOI ECHAD: (Hebrew) “The Lord is one,” end of the “Eli Eli” prayer song.

263–267 Magic Psalm, The Reply and The End record visions experienced after drinking Ayajuasca (Yage or Soga de Muerte, Banisteriopsis caapi), a vine infusion used by Amazon curanderos as spiritual potion, for medicine and sacred vision. See author’s The Yage Letters, w/ William S. Burroughs (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1963). The message is: Widen the area of consciousness.

The End

267 YIN: Feminine principle, receptivity or emptiness, in Chinese Taoist apposition to Yang, active masculine form.

VI

PLANET NEWS: TO EUROPE AND ASIA

(1961–1963)

Who Will Take Over the Universe?

273 CLINT MURCHISON: (1895–1969) Dallas billionaire industrialist (banks, rail, steamships, real estate, gas, oil, publishing, office equipment, movie theaters, restaurants, fishing tackle), conservative establishment Democrat.

273 JUDGE YALE MCFATE: His July 1960 decision affirmed constitutional protection for Native American Church use of psychedelic peyote cactus. Weston LaBarre, The Peyote Cult (New York: Shocken paperback, 1977), pp. 224–25: “The legal action most likely to set precedent, however, is the disposition of the case against Mary Attakai, a member of the Navaho Native American Church, under an anti-peyote ordinance of the Navaho Tribe. The local judge in Flagstaff, Arizona, H. L. Russell, disqualified himself, whereupon the Hon. Yale McFate was sent from Phoenix to preside over the case in the Superior Court of Coconino County in Flagstaff. In a notably lucid and well-informed opinion, rendered on 26 July 1960, the Court held that:

‘Peyote is not a narcotic. It is not habit-forming. … There are about 225,000 members of the organized church, known as the Native American Church, which adheres to this practice. … The use of peyote is essential to the existence of the peyote religion. Without it, the practice of the religion would be effectively prevented. … It is significant that many states which formerly outlawed the use of peyote have abolished or amended their laws to permit its use for religious purposes. It is also significant that the Federal Government has in nowise prevented the use of peyote by Indians or others.’

Inasmuch as the statute under which Mary Attakai was convicted of illegal possession is contrary to both the 14th Amendment of the Federal Constitution and Article II Sections 4, 8, 12, and 13 of the Arizona Constitution, the Court found the statute unconstitutional, exonerated the bond, and dismissed the case. Expert opinion has widely admired the decision of Judge McFate.”

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