June 13: Kenneth Rexroth, "The Bad Old Days," Nostalgia

The Bad Old Days

by:  Kenneth Rexroth

The summer of nineteen eighteen   

I read The Jungle and The

Research Magnificent. That fall   

My father died and my aunt   

Took me to Chicago to live.   

The first thing I did was to take   

A streetcar to the stockyards.   

In the winter afternoon,   

Gritty and fetid, I walked

Through the filthy snow, through the   

Squalid streets, looking shyly   

Into the people’s faces,

Those who were home in the daytime.   

Debauched and exhausted faces,   

Starved and looted brains, faces   

Like the faces in the senile   

And insane wards of charity   

Hospitals. Predatory

Faces of little children.

Then as the soiled twilight darkened,   

Under the green gas lamps, and the   

Sputtering purple arc lamps,   

The faces of the men coming

Home from work, some still alive with   

The last pulse of hope or courage,   

Some sly and bitter, some smart and   

Silly, most of them already   

Broken and empty, no life,   

Only blinding tiredness, worse   

Than any tired animal.   

The sour smells of a thousand   

Suppers of fried potatoes and   

Fried cabbage bled into the street.   

I was giddy and sick, and out   

Of my misery I felt rising   

A terrible anger and out

Of the anger, an absolute vow.   

Today the evil is clean

And prosperous, but it is   

Everywhere, you don’t have to   

Take a streetcar to find it,

And it is the same evil.

And the misery, and the

Anger, and the vow are the same.

__________________________

Nostalgia can be a very comforting thing.  Thinking of days gone by with a sort of wistful longing.  Marcel Proust wrote several books about the subject.  I've been thinking a lot about my time in high school these last few weeks.  I'm not sure if "wistful" is the correct adjective here. 

I did have a pretty good high school experience.  Lots of friends.  Lots of interests--drama, cross country, English, creative writing, girls.  I wouldn't say I was a popular kid, but there wasn't a whole lot of bullying in my life.  Either that, or I just didn't really pay attention to whoever was trying to bully me.

In reality, I suppose, the good old days probably weren't all that good at times.  I had health struggles.  Between my freshman and sophomore years, I ended up in a diabetic coma for a while.  A few days in intensive care, followed by a week-long hospital stay.  Not fun.  Money was always a worry.  I always put pressure on myself to be the best at everything.  The summer after I graduated from high school, I ended up in a months-long depression due to the death of someone very close to me.

Nostalgia sort of whitewashes all that shit I went through.  That's the unhealthy part of it.

Saint Marty is trying not to be nostalgic tonight.  That means not watching The Breakfast Club or Ferris Bueller's Day Off or Stand By Me.

June 14: What I Have Learned About "Howl"

I'm currently at work on a poem for my new collection.  The poem I'm writing is based on Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl."  Thus, I have been reading up on Ginsberg's poem, and I have found out that "Howl" has a history paralleling, in some ways, the evolution of culture in 1960s American (the drug culture, the sexual culture, the political culture).  I thought I'd share some of the information I've acquired since I started this little endeavor, since I'm probably not going to use it anywhere else.  (Most of the background I'm about to relate comes from Wikipedia and a few other online sources.)

Allen Ginsberg wrote "Howl" in 1955 and published it in 1956 in a book titled Howl and Other Poems.  Upon publication, "Howl" made a huge splash in the literary world and established Ginsberg as one of the most important writers of the Beat Generation.  It also spawned obscenity trials and arrests.

Ginsberg wrote the poem (or a good portion of it) in a coffee house in Berkeley, California, called the Caffee Mediterraneum.  He was heavily influenced by Kenneth Rexroth (who told him to "free his voice and write from the heart") and the writers William Carlos Williams and Jack Kerouac.  Eventually, Ginsberg settled on his signature form and style that comprises "Howl."  His style, as described in Wikipedia, is "a long line based on breath organized by a fixed base."  "Howl" is dedicated to Carl Solomon, whom Ginsberg met when the two were confined in a mental institution together.  Ginsberg also admitted that the poem deals with his feelings for his mother, who was schizophrenic and, eventually, lobotomized.

Ginsberg first performed the poem at the Six Gallery in San Francisco on October 7, 1955.  His reading left the audience standing in wonder, stunned and cheering.  Soon after this reading, Lawrence Ferlinghetti published Howl and Other Poems through his City Lights Press.

On June 3, 1957, a bookstore manager in San Francisco was arrested for selling the book to an undercover police officer.  Ferlinghetti was subsequently arrested for publishing the book.  His arrest spawned a famous obscenity trial, covered by Time and Life.  Ferlinghetti won the case, with a judge declaring that "Howl" had "redeeming social importance."

"Howl" went on to become the most famous poem of the Kerouac generation, and Ginsberg became the poetic voice of the 1960s.  He died on April 5, 1997, of liver cancer.

That's what Saint Marty's been doing with his spare time:  falling in love with the "Howl" of a magnificent poet.

Ginsberg (left) and his partner of 40 years, Peter Orlovsky