Allen on Jack Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues continues
[49th
Chorus]
“They got nothing on me/at the university/Them clever
poets/of immensity..” – That’s very funny, actually – “Them clever poets /of
immensity” – “With charcoal suits/and charcoal hair/And green armpits…” –
“Green armpits” – that’s because when we introduced Gregory Corso to John Clellon Holmes and he read some of Gregory’s early poetry, Holmes, who was
a mid-town sophisticate, said, “Oh he writes green armpit poetry”. I guess you all
know “green armpit poetry”. (There’s) much of it written around here [at Naropa]. It’s a whole genre of poetry,
of beginning poets. But – “They got nothing on me/at the university/Them clever
poets/of immensity/ With charcoal suits/and charcoal hair/And green armpits/and
heaven ait/And cheques to balance/my account/in Rome benighted/by White
Russians/Without care who puke/in windows/Everywhere./ They got nothing on me/
‘Cause I’m dead/ They can’t surpass me/’Cause I’m dead/And being dead/I hurt my
head/And now I wait/Without hate/For my fate/To estate” – i.e., no more
ambition, no literary ambition, just pure mind, pure truthful mind. Yes?
Student : How is this different from what you would label
as doggerel?
AG: There are elements of doggerel, but it’s handled so..
actually, it come so funny, it’s almost Emily Dickinson doggerel-esque. “And being dead/I hurt my head” - Quite literal - And now I
wait/Without hate/For my fate/To estate” – It’s quite sensible.It makes a lot
more sense than most doggerel. His fate has estated in this room. His fate has
estated, that’s the funny part. It’s prophetic. But he’s not sure either.
So he says, in the 50th Chorus – “Maybe I’m
crazy, and my parts/Are scattered still – didn’t gather/’em when form was
passin out/The window of the giver ,/So I’m looking for derangement/To bring me
landward back/Through logic’s cold moon air/Where water everywhere/Appears from
magic gems/And Asphasiax, the Nymph/of
India by the Sea/Dances princely mincing/churly jargots/in the oral eloquent air/ of tents’/Canopied majesty/Ten
thousand Buddhas/Hiding Everywhere - /How can I be crazy/Even here?/ - or
wait/Maybe I’m an Agloon/doomed to
be spitted/on the igloo stone/of Some North mad.” – Typical schizophrenic trip.
“Maybe I’m an..” have you ever felt like “an Agloon/doomed to be spitted/on the
igloo stone/of Some North mad.”? – I don’t know how he gets it but it sounds to
me totally archetypal, like anybody’s thought of how weird they themselves are
in relation to other people. Some kind of goofy,lonely, ignu Eskimo doomed to starve on a whale spit, on a whale spear “of
Some North mad.”
They’re funny. Actually, just the ordinary thoughts of an
ordinary mind, saying, “Maybe I’m crazy or maybe I’m not crazy or maybe I’m
“Agloon in the gloom”, you know? That’s the same thing you get in the bathroom
when you’re taking a shit - “How am I?” - It’s archetypal self-reflections
(which most people hide because they seemed too goofy, but by revealing them of
himself), Kerouac gave permission to other people to realize their own natural
ordinary mind idiocy.
Student: It’s being sensitive to the quirks of your mind
AG: Exactly.. Yes, exactly. Sensitive to the quirks of
your own mind – the quirkiness.
And, in this case, since he was such a language man, sensitive to the
quirkiness of his own language – to both the mind-image and the language (I
think they came simultaneously with him)
