Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 202
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465 KLINE: Franz Kline (1910–1962) American abstract expressionist pioneer painter, on whose work Frank O’Hara wrote monograph, died of heart attack.
466 EDWIN DENBY: (1903–1983) China-born, influential dance critic, poet, friend of younger writers of “New York School,” 1960s–1980s; frequented N.Y.C. Ballet and St. Mark’s Poetry Project. (Collected Poems published by Full Court Press, New York, 1975.)
Holy Ghost on the Nod over the Body of Bliss
475 KUAN YIN: Chinese name, Avelokitesvera, compassionate aspect of Buddha. See “Angkor Wat.”
475 SHIVA: Lord energy of creation and destruction, symbolized in Hindu shrines by Shiva lingam or phallus, generally a standing rounded oblong rock covered with flowers and incense.
475 OUROBOROS: Great cosmic snake, tail in mouth completing Einsteinian circle.
475 PARVATI: Shiva’s consort.
475 YOD: Hebrew abbreviation, divine unutterable name.
475 COYOTE: Amerindian trickster-hero god.
475 RAMAKRISHNA: Ecstatic Hindu saint (1836–1886), founder of Vedanta order, entered all religious practices. See The Gospel of Shri Ramakrishna, trans. Swami Nikhilananda (Madras, India: Shri Ramakrishna Math, 1957).
475 BODHIDHARMA: Twenty-eighth Zen patriarch after Sakyamuni in orthodox transmission line, brought Buddism from India to Canton in the West 520 A.D., thus first Chinese patriarch of “Wall-gazing” Chan (Zen) practice; died aged 150 years.
Hui-K’o (486–593) cut off his arm and gave it to Bodhidharma, token of sincerity: “I have no peace of mind … Please pacify it.”
“Bring your mind here.”
“I can’t find it.”
“There, I have pacified your mind.”
An Open Window on Chicago
481 BOUFFANT ROOTS: Upswept hairstyle, with undyed roots growing visible.
482 DAKINI: Buddhist sky goddess, conveyor of insight.
Wales Visitation
488 VISITACIONE: Ancient bardic visiting round in Wales.
488 LLANTHONY VALLEY: Pastoral vale, Welsh Black Mountains.
490 CAPEL-Y-FFN: Ancient ruined chapel at green bottom of Llanthony Valley. Eric Gill, type-font designer and craftsman, dwelt there 1920s with arts commune.
490 LORD HEREFORD S KNOB: Mountain walling north side Llanthony Valley.
490 (LSD): First draft main body of poem was written in fifth hour LSD-inspired afternoon.
Pentagon Exorcism
491 EXORCISM: Gary Snyder’s 1967 Bay Area broadside, A Curse Against the Men in Pentagon, Washington, helped initiate flower-power era mass peace-protest “Levitation” of Pentagon, the demystification of its authority. See Norman Mailer’s extensive account in Armies of the Night (New York: New American Library, 1971 reprint).
491 DIAPHANOID: From title of science fiction movie the author saw 1967 at S. Gemignano while traveling from Florence to Milan.
491 WESTMORELAND: General William C. Westmoreland (b. 1914) “Hawk” commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam 1964–1968, who, not realizing that the majority of Vietnamese didn’t welcome American/Catholic domination of South Vietnam as part of China-containment policy, urged escalation of war, all-out victory by any means, including nuclear.
491 USURY: Allusion to Ezra Pound’s monetarist theory: that banks’ usurous (fast buck high interest) abuse of credit as a commodity, for speculative moneymaking rather than productive ends, cankers the entire economic system of the West. See the Cantos of Ezra Pound, “Canto XLV” (New York: New Directions, 1970): “With Usura the line grows thick.”
491 MCDONNELL DOUGLAS TO GENERAL DYNAMICS: These corporations were chief military contractees to Pentagon, 1967.
491 APOKATASTASIS: Event wherein ignorant or “satanic” energy is transformed instantaneously to divine wisdom light, as might be at end of Kali Yuga.
491 RAKSA: Tibetan mantra to purify site for a ceremony, from Hevajra Tantra. Raksa is an energy daemon.
491 PEKING: At time of composition, diplomatic nonrecognition of existence of People’s Republic of China was an obsession central to U.S. anti-red cold war monolithic “containment policy” strong-armed politically by “China Lobby,” including then ex-Vice-President Richard Nixon.
Elegy Che Guevara
492 RUSK: Secretary of State Dean Rusk (1909–1994) President Johnson’s hawkish diplomatic executive for Vietnam War.
493 NORRIS: Frank Norris (1876–1902) Novelist, author of naturalist novel The Pit, drama of frenzied Chicago grain market.
493 OBSERVERS’ BALCONY: “Street theater action” initiated 1968 by Abbie Hoffman at New York Stock Exchange, throwing a bag of dollars on the exchange floor as war protest. Thenceforth balcony was walled with glass.
Elegies for Neal Cassady
(1968)
Elegy for Neal Cassady
496 SHABDA: (Sanskrit) Sound or vibration, a path of yoga.
496 GREAT YEAR: 24,000-year cycle of the sun, which rises for 2,000 years each through 12 zodiacal constellations, as it wobbles almost imperceptibly on its sidereal axis; presently entering Age of Aquarius.
497 HEJIRA: Mohammed’s flight from Mecca, A.D. 622; Kesey’s bus trip, A.D. 1964, Neal Cassady at driver’s wheel.
497 LOWELL: Massachusetts Merrimack River redbrick mill town where Jack Kerouac was raised, site of many novels.
Ecologues of These States
(1969–1971)
Over Denver Again
519 ALLEYWAY LILA: Lila (Sanskrit), “play,” as in Krishna’s play on earth, “Krishna Lila.”
Falling Asleep in America
525 BEULAH: Blake term for mythic realm of subconscious, source of dream-poetic inspiration.
Northwest Passage
526 JOHNSON BUTTE: High mountain plateau overlooking Lake Wallula at confluence of Snake and Columbia rivers. Horse Heaven Hills top the vast butte.
526 SAKAJAWEA: Indian lady guide for Lewis and Clark expedition through Northwest native territory hitherto unknown by white men.
526 THALASSA: (Greek) Sea.
527 SIRHAN: Sirhan J. Sirhan, young Palestine-born assassin of Robert F. Kennedy, Los Angeles 1968. His comments on conviction, and description of his visage, were taken from Associated Press reports.
527 52% PEOPLE: Refers to 1968 Gallup poll.
527 SDS: Radical activist Students for a Democratic Society, whose early 1960s “Port Huron Declaration” proposed patriotic reform of institutionalized race prejudice and abusive imperial exploitation of nature and human labor. SDS rose as an alternative to the relatively passive “establishment” National Students Association, which had absorbed much natural student energy but was revealed during mid-1960s Senate investigation to have been funded by the CIA as a front for covert propaganda activity and an illegal domestic training ground for agents. SDS was later infiltrated and sabotaged covertly by the FBI, whose “cointel” (counterintelligence) policy was blueprinted to create leadership dissension and split white student youth from alliance with black activist groups. SDS fragmented in early 1970s, having helped spearhead early civil rights struggle in South and later extreme student opposition to U.S. military invasion of Indochina.
528 MIRA BAI: 14th-century Indian poetess, ecstatic Krishna worshiper. Her sacred devotional songs are still sung in villages and cities of India.
Sonora Desert-Edge
530 DRUM H.: Arizona poet Drummond Hadley (student of Charles Olson, friend of Gary Snyder), from whom author first heard Padmasambhava mantra.
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