Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 207

• Предыдущая
• 207/287
• Следующая

Las Vegas: Verses Improvised for El Dorado H.S. Newspaper

728 MOAPA: Original nomadic inhabitants of Nevada.

728 ROBERT MAHEU: (b. 1917) Secretary to Howard Hughes, ex-FBI, introduced Sam Giancana and John Roselli (business acquaintances of Tampa syndicate boss Santos Trafficante, co-worker with Jack Ruby, and pre-Castro vice/narcotic lord of Havana territory) to CIA official Sheffield Edwards, to arrange assassination of Cuban premier Castro. Personages of Watergate plumbers team were associated with the much-reported yet little-researched anti-Castro Cuban Mafia circle of secret operations. See “Hadda Be Playing on the Jukebox” note.

(Sheffield Edwards was also CIA Chief of Security, which office oversaw early 1950s drug experiment programs, psychedelic and otherwise.)

728 MT. CHARLESTON: Sacred mountain among Moapa tribes in traditional migratory cycle.

728 ENGLEBERT: Mr. Humperdinck, popular cabaret entertainer.

728 PLATONIC YEAR: See “Plutonian Ode” note.

728 UNDER THE ASTRONOMICAL FLAGP OLE: Harold Ickes, interior secretary under FDR, commissioned various solar system designs, including the Great Year pattern of earth’s wobble on its sidereal axis, to be set in bronze on Hoover Dam’s plaza, marking the monumental size of the project, equal in scope to the Egyptian pyramids.

728 BUGSY SIEGEL: Original organized crime/vice chief of Las Vegas, assassinated by shots through window of Beverly Hills living room, 1947.

Ruhr-Gebiet

734 STAMMHEIM: Isolation prison where “terrorist” Baader-Meinhof gang members (originally armed by police double agents) were subject to continuous interrogation under 24-hour glare lighting.

735 “GUESTS” DO THE WORK: Gastarbeiter, “guest workers” of post-WWII West Germany: Turks, Italians, Slavs imported for heavy labor or menial work.

Reflections at Lake Louise

741 ORYOKI: Traditional style of formal three-bowl mindful silent eating practice in Zendoo (meditation hall).

Ode to Failure

745 MAYAKOVSKY CRIED, THEN DIE! MY VERSE: “Let glory/disconsolate widow frail/trudge after genius/in funeral anthems/Die, my verse,/die, like the rank and file/as our unknown, unnumbered, fell/in storming heaven.”—Vladimir Mayakovsky, “At the Top of My Voice,” 1930, in Mayakovsky and His Poetry, trans. Herbert Marshall (London: Pilot Press, 1943). Frank O’Hara first called author’s attention to this poem.

Birdbrain!

746 XOCHOPILI: Formerly referred to as “God of Flowers” in tourist guidebooks. Vegetable forms incised on his celebrated statue in Mexico City’s Archaeological Museum have been identified by Harvard Botanical Museum director Richard E. Schultes as peyote, morning glory, amanita mushroom, tobacco, etc. Evidence of Xochopili culture was obliterated during Spanish conquest.

746 RAN GERMANY ON AMPHETAMINES: Among other books, Inside the Third Reich, memoirs of Albert Speer (New York: Macmillan, 1970), gives evidence on Hitler’s rug-chewing speed addiction.

“Defending the Faith”

750 MAGLIC CASTLE: Castle of “mist” or “fog” (maglic) at heart of original kingdom of Serbia.

750 IVAR RIVER BANK: (12th-century “Ras”) In Ivar River Valley, “Valley of the Kings.” “Where the valley narrows to form a dramatic gorge … stand the remains of the Magli’c fortress perched like an eagle’s nest upon a separate spur of the mountains” (Fodor’s Yugoslavia, 1972, p. 277).

* Notes for “Angkor Wat” from Fulcrum Press edition (London, 1968).

Epigraphs from Original Editions

‘Unscrew the locks from the doors!

Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!’ (Howl)

‘—Die,

If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!’ (Kaddish)

‘Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy’ (Reality Sandwiches)

‘O go way man I can

     hypnotize this nation

I can shake the earth’s foundation

     with the Maple Leaf Rag.’ (Planet News)

‘To find the Western path

Right thro’ the Gates of Wrath

I urge my way;

Sweet Mercy leads me on:

With soft Repentant moan

I see the break of day’ (Gates of Wrath)

‘Thus is the heaven a vortex pass’d already, and the earth

A vortex not yet pass’d by the traveller thro’ Eternity’ (Gates of Wrath)

‘The yearning infinite recoils,

For terrible is earth!’ (Gates of Wrath)

‘… same electric lightning South

     follows this train

               Apocalypse prophesied—

     the fall of America

          signalled from Heaven—’ (The Fall of America)

     ‘Time after time for such a journey none but iron pens

Can write And adamantine leaves receive nor can the man who goes

The journey obstinate refuse to write time after time’ (Mind Breaths)

‘Meeting, the two friends laugh aloud;

In the grove, fallen leaves are many’ (Poems All Over the Place)

‘La science, la nouvelle noblesse! Le progres. Le monde marche! Pourquoi ne tournerait-il pas?’ (Plutonian Ode)

Dedications to

Jack Kerouac, new Buddha of American prose, who spit forth intelligence into eleven books written in half the number of years (1951–1956)—On the Road, Visions of Neal, Dr Sax, Springtime Mary, The Subterraneans, San Francisco Blues, Some of the Dharma, Book of Dreams, Wake Up, Mexico City Blues, and Visions of Gerard—creating a spontaneous bop prosody and original classic literature. Several phrases and the title of Howl are taken from him.

William Seward Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch, an endless novel which will drive everybody mad.

Neal Cassady, author of The First Third, an autobiography (1949) which enlightened Buddha.

All these books are published in Heaven.

HOWL

Peter Orlovsky

in

Paradise

‘Taste my mouth in your ear’

KADDISH

To Herbert E. Huncke

for his Confessions

• Предыдущая
• 207/287
• Следующая