Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg

by Jack Kerouac

  Mustapha

  Allen Ginsberg [n.p., Paterson, New Jersey?] to

  Jack Kerouac [Ozone Park, New York]

  before May 15, 1949

  A Rainy Day in May.

  Dear Jack:

  Thank you for writing, your letter39 came via my father (also opens my mail now) like a Halcyon to my troubled waters.

  I was in N.Y. all weekend, and called up [John Clellon] Holmes for news of you. When you’re in town, I can be reached in the late morning or early afternoon, usually, at my lawyer’s; at evenings perhaps at my aunt’s house; at night at Charles Peters. Eugene [Brooks], also, is most likely to know my whereabouts.

  No news yet as to what will happen. I feel more and more deeply involved. Van Doren gave me a straightforward lecture telling me that people around Columbia were sick and tired of my mock-guilt and my “Satanism,” which I am supposed to have fostered. They are bored with all my “mush.” Well, I guess he is right. There are two sides to every question [but?] I have begun to feel more and more lost and unsure of myself. Which is a good feeling, I guess, as usual. Never mind, I’ll try to explain all the above when I see you. Anyway my bullshit is coming back to haunt me. Things get more real.

  I called up [Elbert] Lenrow and told him O.K. for Friday, so I will see you then at 4:00 at his house. It will be a state occasion.

  When you write, if you have any news of anybody out of the way, give them novel-names: Pomeroy [Cassady], Claude [Carr], Denison [Burroughs], Virginia (Vicki). Junky [Huncke] call Clem (nice name?) If I am in the future to put efforts out in correspondence I might as well think to prepare safeguards from the beginning.

  Maybe I should invent a secret code.

  Allen

  I asked my father what he thought of the poetry you enclosed; he “didn’t care for it” as the figures of speech were “clouded” and foggy. I have wondered what you might do with poetry. I don’t know enough about its real inner secrets or technical measures, so I can’t say what I will with “authority!” (I mean I’m not sure I’m right). It seems to me that you have pure feeling for the trust veins—the prophetic-biblical (“I am he who watches the lamb”) and the prophetic—joyful (“Pull my daisy, Tip my cup.”) The saving of the latter is what is most desired. As it happened you were already equipped with meaningful or significant symbols, taken from life around—Yeats, in a book called [King of ] the Great Clock Tower—1935 says, describing how he went to Ezra Pound and another mystic called A.E. for literary advice: “Then I took my verse to a friend of my own school, and this friend did go on like that. Plays like the Great Clock Tower always seem unfinished but that is no matter. Begin plays without knowing how to end them for the sake of the lyrics. I once wrote a play and after I had filled it with lyrics abolished the play,” etc. That is one way to get the purity of inspiration and language in a meaningful background. You ought to write a beautiful book someday which like Rabelais and Quixote and Boccacio is filled with tales, poems, riddles, lyrics, and secret phrases. What I meant to do in the doldrums is to write so many poems that, though, on their own, none would seem significant, by the time the book were read, their whole purpose and reality of purpose would be evident. At this point, for instance, writing about ghosts, angels, specters, etc.; the way has been already prepared for the use of these symbols by what has gone before—and will be modified by what has to come after. This is all a propos of what you said about the poem I read in your notebook that I thought was such pure poetry.

  The symbols in this poem (and the one in notebook) seem to me more clear and with real reference than you admitted yourself (as far as the notebook) what seems to be emerging in you is the first mouthings of the real Lamb, which is an awesome thing to behold, and to some (including yourself?) a cloudy sight. Unless I am wrong you will see in the poetry (or you see in the prose) more and more real significance (I mean all in what you have written and why you might write) (Everything is possible, in fact, probable, as far as “prophetic” power, or what I call here prophetic power.) What remains, when the meaning of the poems (aside from their passionate, frenzy-poetic being) comes clear to you is to organize them and direct them consciously. The same, or similar elevation of style, I mean, is possible with a purely practical, pragmatic purpose, provided naturally such a level of mind is attained. In other words what you may feel to be false (“I have written some truly amazing poetry, if you can call it that . . . ”) about the manner or content of the poetry you write, is really false, and that element of falseness must be dealt with, not necessarily by changing to a meaner, more limited style and ambition and liking, or inclination, or penchant; but by following out the inclination to its end and seeing ultimate truth. So you can call it “poetry”—what you’re writing seems to be potentially great poetry. You are doing no different (as you know) than what any true poet does; only doing it with more shining and profound manner than any poets I know of our generation. You should not necessarily investigate poetic measure (rhyme and metrical tradition). Your poetry has abrupt stops transitions due to its improvised nature. That can only be solved in the fulfillment of ripeness of purpose, not by constricting the rhythm artificially to conform. I have done that and I made a mistake. I have to learn how to talk naturally in verse again; find out how to say great things or beautiful things naturally. You do that already.

  I have been improvising, what I mean really, is that when you say of yourself “I am he who watches the Lamb,” I believe it. My father doesn’t, and maybe doesn’t believe in the Lamb, even, so he thinks its all foggy.

  I have been at our poem again:This token may I tup

  Runneth over broken.

  Pull my Daisy,

  Tip my Cup,

  All my doors are open.

  also:Who is the hooded mummer of the night

  green haired and mouldy in the eye

  that reddens in the window pane’s dim light

  and startles old men, and makes children cry?

  Who is that shroudy stranger in the street

  to shadowed children, stinking of the dead,

  and dance unfixed, though bound in phantom feet,

  Behind the child who weeps with limbs of lead?

  Who is the secret and familiar shade

  That walks through bedrooms, where the sleeper curled

  With open eye lies still? No sign is made.

  World must beckon vainly unto world.

  The above is a first version, a little diffuse with not enough concentrated imagery. I have to dye it green all over.

  Bon ami,

  Allen

  Editors’ Note: On May 15, 1949, Kerouac arrived in Denver and set up a house for his mother and sister. He had finally received an advance for The Town and the City and felt that his success was now just a matter of time. In June his family and furniture arrived, but as it turned out both would return to the East Coast early in July.

  Jack Kerouac [Westwood, Colorado] to

  Allen Ginsberg [Paterson, New Jersey]

  May 23, 1949

  6100 W. Center Ave.

  Westwood, Colo.

  Dear Allen:

  Just a note till I get my typewriter. Am living alone in this new house in the foothills west of Denver waiting for family . . . and any signs. Leased $75-a-month house for one year. Dancingmaster D.40 negotiated inside info for me. He is just like us, incidentally. Said he knew all the Denver birds worth knowing—I told him he was saving me a lot of trouble. He smiled. He’s okay. Met another Denver bird—big social science genius.

  My house is near the mountains. This is the wrath of sources—the Divide where rain and rivers are decided. Here, too, soft meadows in the rumorous afternoons. I am Rubens and this is my Netherlands beneath the church-steps. (Remember that Rubens I showed you?) This place is full of God, and yellow butterflies.

  Pomeroy [Neal Cassady] is in Frisco. A girl told me (Al H. [Hinkle]’s sister) that she dropped him off two weeks ago somewhere at Russian Hill. Therefore Pommy has no car. Russian
Hill is white tenements with crooked roofs.

  Dancingmaster said you were a great poet.

  I hitch-hike into Denver and sit in Larimer poolhalls and go to 20¢ movies to see the myth of the gray West. Mostly I’m writing . . . and hiking, “leaping over brooks.”

  Will copy all latest stuff when I get typewriter. All about the Mississippi River at Port Allen Ol Port Allen—for rain is alive and rivers cry too, cry too—Port Allen like Allen poor Allen, ah me.

  The Bridge of Bridges there over the water of life. “It is where rain tends, and rain softly connects us all, as we together tend as rain to the all-river of togetherness to the sea.”

  “And the sea is the gulf of mortality in blue eternities.”

  “So the stars shine warm in the Gulf of Mexico at night.”

  “Then from soft and thunderous Carib—(Clem’s)—comes tidings, rumblings, electricities, furies and wraths of life-giving rainy God—and from the Continental Divide come swirls of atmosphere and snow-fire and winds of the eagle rainbow and shrieking midwife harpies—Then there are labourings over the waves—and little raindrop that in Missouri fell and in Louisiana is gathered earth and mortal mud; selfsame little raindrop indestructible—rise! be resurrected in the Gulfs of night, and Fly! Fly! Fly on back over the down-alongs whence previous you came—and live again! live again!—go gather muddy roses again, and bloom in the waving mells of the waterbed, and sleep, sleep, sleep . . .”

  (In other words, am beginning to find out why rain sleeps. You encouraged me greatly, therefore I continue in this kind investigation previously disallowed me.)

  Also—

  Poem Decided Upon in Ohio

  It’s a helluvan—Ohio

  In the hullabaloo of the bees

  When you’re out in the hay

  On a mulberry day

  a helluva hullabaloo.

  It’s a helluvan—Ohio

  In the lullaby-loo of the hay

  In the hullabaloo and the lullaby-loo

  Of the bees and the hay and the bees-hay.

  Please write. Try my new address. Next year I’m getting a mountain ranch. Worry about the green face, not laws. (I was once in nut-house, y’know.)

  J

  P.S. I’m anxious to know how everything turns out. I hope you will keep a large correspondence with me. Write as soon as you can and as often—and I’ll do the same.

  Allen Ginsberg [Paterson, New Jersey] to

  Jack Kerouac [Denver, Colorado]

  after May 23, 1949

  324 Hamilton Ave.

  Paterson 1, N.J.

  Dear Jean-Louis:

  Whichaways is Westwood? I remember little foothills north (?) leading to Central City mountains; and the long plateau and red deserts south toward Colo. Springs; but West? When are your family going to go out? After long negotiations, I wrote your brother-in-law [Paul Blake] to get the bed; he did, with my brother helping him. I didn’t see them meet and it was all an accident that they ever did under the skies of N.Y., but they did. I always thought the Dancingmaster was O.K. but so much like me that I felt like a reincarnation of him, after several new lives and purifications. Strange how well I feel I know him—or does everybody really recognize Mr. Death? and feel akin? I owe Death $10; tell him I’m sorry but am not as usual in a position to pay up my debts to him; but that I will before the great accounting; and since I know that, tell him I know that, and that his $10 will ultimately reach him. (Unless it is miraculously forgiven—but don’t tell him that.) Yes, I remember the dancing feast of rubes—is everything so alive and free for you really? All God and butterflies? I envy you. I am caught still in the grey moils of selfhood and thought, that I fear I shall never feel past the divide in life, and never feel the rain running down my face, and never swim in the dark river. Pomeroy [Neal Cassady]? What is he all alone for?

  You must be alone yourself in Denver, living in a big house. Speaking of rubes there is a scene in one of the Faust legends where the master leaves his study, having just renounced alchemy and metaphysic lore, and steps outside into just such a celebration as the one in the picture. I don’t remember what else he says or does except he sings a song or writes a poem in praise of the dance and then goes back into his house and calls up the Devil—who appears. I saw Thomas Mann lecture on “Goethe and Democracy”—perhaps the same lecture that Pomeroy saw last year. Mann is wiry and energetic and very young; he sends electric thought into everybody but usually they don’t know it and he is weary of people; but praises “Life.”

  I don’t know what the rain is about and hope you find out why it sleeps but like I said I don’t know what the rain is about. Oh I am weary of thinking that I encouraged you. It’s hard for me to maintain. The rhetoric is fine, the music’s lovely, but as Clem [Huncke] used to say “Shit, another, I can’t dance.” Did you ever hear him say that? He’d be wandering around the house abstractedly, and he’d drop a napkin, or sink into a chair wearily, saying that. How like a little girl at dancing school he is, all hung up on his mother. I have his extant collected works (about 30 pages) with me.

  Things have taken a turn, I guess, here. I myself am sick and tired of hearing all these people around me judging and judging without (it seems) any idea of what they are saying. But I am too confused now to fight back. Anyway, I am being taken to a hospital, a mental hospital, soon, I believe. My lawyer took me to a psychiatrist (highly recommended by Trilling, and a nice man) who suggests that for the immediate picture I am “too sick” to do anything but go to the hatch—sicker than I or anybody knows (He-He!) except him. I breathe a great sigh of relief; at last I have maneuvered myself to the position I have always fancied the most proper and true for me. As you say you were in a nut house but I ought to repeat what I’ve said over and over, I really believe or want to believe really that I am nuts, otherwise I’ll never be sane. Or to put it more simply; yes, I take this development seriously and wish to cooperate with the authorities who want to help me they say. Unfortunately I (like evil Burroughs who is damned) don’t trust them (you, Kerouac, are crazier than me) but moi, I can be saved because sometimes I’ll break up in hysterics and beg their pardon for having ever doubted them. Unfortunately they continually contradict themselves, too—but I must forget that and curb the unreasonable intellectual pride or vanity which makes me inhuman and makes me think that I (like Denison [Burroughs]) am smarter than them. Anyway I’m caught as you can see in the toils of my mind again; this time I hope it is decisive. Of course I am sick and tired of all the attendant introspective bullshit, and tired of the inactivity and self-laceration of madness, and tired of fighting with people—lawyers, parents, Clem [Huncke], school, etc. tired of my continual absorption in enervating introspection which has gone past control into at this point a wild-land and wonderland of horror and joy in external action—now to be sent free to a psychoanalytic clinic (on 168th St.) as an inpatient (I think that is what will happen) is O.K. I don’t want to wind up in decadence and gooey abstraction, I’d rather go West to the sun. But at the moment I don’t really know how and am caught like a rat in a trap. I thought all along I was getting clearer in the head and saner and wiser and truer, but the truth is that Chase was always right, and I feel now as if I’ve gotten so hung up on myself now it isn’t funny any more. I stop in the middle of conversations, laughing shrilly—stare at people with perfect sobriety and remorse—and then go on cackling away.

  I called Claude [Lucien Carr] up once, the Friday nite that you left. He said nobody had asked him any questions. He was O.K. Said “I’m in your corner, kid; keep your chin up.” How strangely true I felt his seriousness was.

  I had, before the madhouse, intended to settle down in Paterson for good, as you suggested—I discovered myself that I had to do it. But no. How ironic, that I should not finally return home, but should have another fate open (perhaps a good one?) yet. All my doors are open, I feel that more and more. I let people take enormous liberties. How madly they rush past me, rocking to and fro in the busin
ess of the world! My lawyer tells me I am crazy, that I have subjectivized my sexual ideas, even; so I believe him. He talks on until I realize that he is so innocent he does not know that women also blow men, and that that happens in America naturally—I tell him about the Kinsey Report; he tells me I am exaggerating my own delusions. Ah me. But no! I will believe everybody! Just like Van Doren told me to choose between criminals (Huncke) and society (my lawyer). I asked for a middle choice, but he said that this was The Choice. How frightened I was; and I chose Society. He (Van Doren) told me that I had exaggerated and romanticized Clem out of his class, while he was just a common hoodlum; and my lawyer describes him as a “filthy stinking mess—one look at him and you can tell he’s no good.” But I believe them, too! The thing is, Jack, that I have been intimidated into believing everybody because I don’t know what I myself believe, and now I am so confused I can’t even write poems, hardly. But (Ah!) they will all be judged, thank god. My judgment (I feel) is now, during this life. They may never get judged till their deaths; but they will burn for every thoughtless word, every [unclean?] wound, every dead-eyed evil done, every insult and indignity! They’ll burn! He! He! He! I am burning already, I can afford to laugh. I have put it to rhyme

  (Ah! Si je me venjece! Les damnes!)

  Write me about Denver and Birds.

  The Complaint of the Skeleton to Time

  1. Take my love, it is not true,

  So let it tempt no body new;

  Take my Lady, she will sigh

  For my bed where’er I lie;