Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 201
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423 KENNEY … MORPHY: Friends of William S. Burroughs in 1930s St. Louis.
423 W.S.B.: William Seward Burroughs
425 FRENCH TRUTH, DUTCH CIVILITY: “French Truth, Dutch prowess, British Policy,/Hibernian Learning, Scotch civility,/Spaniards Dispatch, Danes wit,/are mainly seen in thee.”—Earl of Rochester, “On Nothing”
425 CRANE: See Hart Crane’s address to Whitman, The Bridge, end of Cape Hatteras section.
Bayonne Entering NYC
429 CANNASTRA: William Cannastra, ex-Harvard Law suicide-accident-dead (1950) friend of N.Y. painters and poets, including W. H. Auden and Jack Kerouac. See “In Memoriam,” September 1950.
Uptown
432 MADAME GRADY: Panna Grady, patron of letters, friend of poets Charles Olson, John Wieners and William Burroughs, once lived at Dakota Apartments, Central Park West, N.Y., and held literary salon there.
Zigzag Back Thru These States
(1966–1967)
Iron Horse
442 EDWARD CARPENTER: Contemporary, disciple of Whitman, British educator-poet. See “Turin-Paris Express” from his poem book Towards Democracy, 1902, a rare example of successful Whitmanic line.
442 HOMER: Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s late sizable black dog, subject of several popular poems.
443 MULADHARA SPHINCTER: Refers to anal chakra (one of seven bodily centers of spirit energy in Orient yoga practice).
443 SAHASRARAPADMA: Seventh chakra, “thousand-petal lotus” at skulltop.
443 GAVIN ARTHUR: (d. 1972) Bay area astrologer, grandson of U.S. President Chester A. Arthur, had slept with Carpenter, who’d slept with Whitman, according to written testament entrusted to author. See text, Gay Sunshine Interviews, ed. Winston Leyland, vol. 1, San Francisco, 1978, pp. 126–28.
444 MR. CUMMINGS & MR. VINAL: E. E. Cummings wrote much-anthologized poem mocking lesser poet Harold Vinal: “Poem, or Beauty Hurts Mr. Vinal.”
444 SEBSI: Moroccan clay pipe for kif.
446 NA-MU SA-MAN-DA … SO-MO-KO: “Dharani of Removing Disasters,” repeated thrice in temple usage. See D. T. Suzuki, Manual of Zen Buddhism (New York: Grove Press, 1960).
447 WALTER LIPPMANN: (1889–1974) Aging political columnist/philosopher wrote thus in newspapers the week of “Iron Horse” ride.
447 SAM LEWIS: “Sufi Sam”—world traveler, founder of Sufi sect in San Francisco, friend of Gavin Arthur.
447 DR. LOURIA: Leon Louria, Naomi’s boyfriend, “Dr. Isaac” of “Kaddish,” had served as consulting physician for National Maritime Union until purged as left-winger in Senator Joe McCarthy era, early 1950s.
447 FREEHOLD NEW JERSEY: Geyshe Wangyal, first Gelugpa sect Tibetan Buddhist teacher in America, founded his monastery at Freehold in 1950s.
450 GEORGE E. TURNER: Ephemeral Texas journalist (b. 1925) whose acid comments author read on train newspaper.
451 YEVTUSHENKO: Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the then-popular Russian poet, had written an open letter to novelist John Steinbeck questioning his support for U.S. military occupation of South Vietnam.
455 THE WOMAN IN THE RED DRESS: The woman who “informed” on “Public Enemy No. 1,” John Dillinger, leading FBI to the Biograph movie house where he was cornered and shot.
455 PURVIS: FBI agent who organized Dillinger’s fatal ambush.
455 HENRY CROWN: (1896–1990) Chicago business hustler, made early fortune buying municipally owned rock waste and selling it back to Chicago for road construction; later major stockholder and 1959–1966 chairman executive committee, director, of then-number-one military-industrial-complex corporation, General Dynamics.
457 FULBRIGHT: Senator James William Fulbright (1905–1995) Head of Senate Foreign Relations Committee 1959–1974, made eloquent public attack on President Johnson’s expansion of the Vietnam War.
458 SHERI MARTINELLI: American painter and miniaturist, formerly N.Y. fashion model, friend-companion to Ezra Pound at St. Elizabeths Hospital, Washington, D.C., in mid-’50s. An acquaintance of Charlie Parker, she served somewhat as Pound’s connection to the new cultural life in U.S. postwar underground. A tiny book of her portraits, with prefatory note by Pound, was published by Editions Scheiwiller, Milan, 1956.
458 YAJALoN VALLEY: Isolated mountain valley town, Chiapas.
458 XOCHIMILCO: Ancient floating gardens, Mexico City, where Kerouac, Orlovsky and the author met a party of Mexican ballet boys in a sightseeing boat. See Kerouac’s Desolation Angels, Book Two, Part One, section 20.
458 FIJIJIAPAN: town close to Guadalajara, Mexico, notable for its candy.
459 KEDERNATH & BADRINATH & GANGOTRI: Northwest India Hindu pilgrimage sites on the way to Kailash, Shiva’s sacred Tibetan border mountain abode, source of Ganges.
459 MANASAROVAR: Iced lake on Kailash.
450 KARMA: Hindu-Buddhist concept of inevitable interconnection of cause and effect. Karma may be “white” and “black,” wholesome and unwholesome, meritorious or unmeritorious, or neutral, in mixed degrees, according to the activities of Mind, Speech, and Body that initiate karmic momentum and payback. “Black” karma example: As ignorant greed motivates agribusiness to aggressive exploitation of soil, so soil may collapse under assault of chemical poisons, finally become barren, eroded, no longer nourishing its bewildered and inconsiderable stewards. Further example: As American populace is indifferent to military sufferings its government wreaks on distant nations, Indochina to Central America, so will that public heartlessness progressively discourage private trust and adhesiveness between government and populace. On individual scale, a father, careless of his children, may not have faithful helpers on his deathbed.
Such karmic patterns may be altered and their energy made wholesome through meditative mindfulness, conscious awareness, the practice of appreciation, which burns up karma on the spot. Traditionally, attentive appreciation of an enlightened teacher who has transcended his/her own karma may inspire the student/seeker/citizen to work from “black” through “white” situations toward holistic primordial experience, or unconditioned states of mind and activity, exchanging self for others, liberated from karma as may be Mahatma Gandhi or certain Buddhist folk or Native American elders.
461 SRI RAMA NA MAHARSHI: 20th-century South Indian ascetic saint, instructed meditation practice, “Who Am I?” Quotations are from his book Maha Yoga.
464 MANNAHATTA:
Starting from fish-shaped Paumanok where I was born,
Well-begotten, and rais’d by a perfect mother,
After roaming many lands, lover of populous pavements,
Dweller in Mannahatta, my city … (“Starting from Paumanok”)
“Thus Walt Whitman, born in Long Island, paraphrases the old Indian name for New York City. ‘Mannahatta! How fit a name for America’s great democratic island city! The word itself, how beautiful! how aboriginal! how it seems to rise with tall spires glistening in the sunshine, with such New World atmosphere, vista and action!’” (Justin Kaplan, Walt Whitman: A Life [New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980] p. 107.)
Sri Ramana Maharshi. Photographer unknown. (See n.p. 461.)
City Midnight Junk Strains
465 FRANK O HARA: (1926–1966) Gay central figure in N.Y. literary art life 1950s till his death; MOMA exhibitions department curator, inspired a whole generation of N.Y. “Personism” poets; died struck by beach buggy, dark midnight accident Fire Island. See “The Day Lady Died,” in his Collected Poems (New York: Knopf, 1972).
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