William Carlos Williams, born September 17, 1883

W.C.W. (1883-1963)

"Post-modern (after Williams)" 

M. Bromberg

So much depends 

upon

a red Mer- 

cedes 

glazed with paste 

wax

beside the white 

condos

Williams' famous introduction to Howl is at the Allen Ginsberg Project page. (Photo of W.C.W. by Constantin Joffe from wood s lot) 

Bob Dylan, born May 24 1941

From Chronicles Vol 1:

On the corner I put the dime in the slot and dialed the operator for long distance, called collect and the call went right through. I wanted everyone to know I was all right. My mother would usually give me the latest run of the mill stuff. My father had his own way of looking at things. To him life was hard work. He’d come from a generation of different values, heroes and music, and wasn’t so sure that the truth would set anybody free. He was pragmatic and always had a word of cryptic advice. “Remember, Robert, in life anything can happen. Even if you don’t have all the things you want, be grateful for the things you don’t have that you don’t want.” My education was important to him. He would have wanted me to become a mechanical engineer. But in school, I had to struggle to get even decent grades. I was not a natural student. My mom, bless her, who had always stood up for me and was firmly on my side in just about anything and everything, was more concerned about “a lot of monkey business out there in the world,” and would add, “Bobby, don’t forget you have relatives in New Jersey.” I’d already been to Jersey but not to visit relatives.

Lou snapped the big tape machine off after listening hard to one of my original songs. “Woody Guthrie, eh? That’s interesting. What made you want to write a song about him? I used to see him and his partner, Leadbelly-they used to play at the Garment Workers Hall over on Lexington Avenue. You ever heard ‘You Can’t Scare Me, I’m Sticking to the Union’?” Sure I’d heard it.

“Whatever happened to him, anyway?”

“Oh, he’s over in Jersey. He’s in the hospital there.”

Lou chomped away. “Nothing serious I hope. What other songs do you have? Let’s put ‘em all down.”

Sun Ra, born May 22, 1914

"I was busy studying my psychic things, trying to find out what makes this planet tick, and why is everything going wrong, and why people are headed toward nuclear annihilation. So I was busy trying to find out, where does God stand; why doesn't he do something? I had to find out: why? And that's what I was doing; I was researching."

Sun Ra

[Herman Poole Blount]

May 22, 1914 - May 30, 1993

Gary Snyder, born May 8 1930

Gary Snyder at home near Nevada City (photo by Dan Chung, Guardian UK, 2008)

SMOKEY THE BEAR SUTRA

BY GARY SNYDER

Once in the Jurassic about 150 million years ago, the Great Sun Buddha in this corner of the Infinite Void gave a discourse to all the assembled elements and energies: to the standing beings, the walking beings, the flying beings, and the sitting beings--even the grasses, to the number of thirteen billion, each one born from a seed, assembled there: a Discourse concerning Enlightenment on the planet Earth.

"In some future time, there will be a continent called America. It will have great centers of power called such as Pyramid Lake, Walden Pond, Mt. Rainier, Big Sur, Everglades, and so forth; and powerful nerves and channels such as Columbia River, Mississippi River, and Grand Canyon. The human race in that era will get into troubles all over its head, and practically wreck everything in spite of its own strong intelligent Buddha-nature."

"The twisting strata of the great mountains and the pulsings of volcanoes are my love burning deep in the earth. My obstinate compassion is schist and basalt and granite, to be mountains, to bring down the rain. In that future American Era I shall enter a new form; to cure the world of loveless knowledge that seeks with blind hunger: and mindless rage eating food that will not fill it."

And he showed himself in his true form of

SMOKEY THE BEAR

A handsome smokey-colored brown bear standing on his hind legs, showing that he is aroused and watchful.

Bearing in his right paw the Shovel that digs to the truth beneath appearances; cuts the roots of useless attachments, and flings damp sand on the fires of greed and war;

His left paw in the mudra of Comradely Display--indicating that all creatures have the full right to live to their limits and that of deer, rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, dandelions, and lizards all grow in the realm of the Dharma;

Wearing the blue work overalls symbolic of slaves and laborers, the countless men oppressed by a civilization that claims to save but often destroys;

Wearing the broad-brimmed hat of the west, symbolic of the forces that guard the wilderness, which is the Natural State of the Dharma and the true path of man on Earth:

all true paths lead through mountains--

With a halo of smoke and flame behind, the forest fires of the kali-yuga, fires caused by the stupidity of those who think things can be gained and lost whereas in truth all is contained vast and free in the Blue Sky and Green Earth of One Mind;

Round-bellied to show his kind nature and that the great earth has food enough for everyone who loves her and trusts her;

Trampling underfoot wasteful freeways and needless suburbs, smashing the worms of capitalism and totalitarianism;

Indicating the task: his followers, becoming free of cars, houses, canned foods, universities, and shoes, master the Three Mysteries of their own Body, Speech, and Mind; and fearlessly chop down the rotten trees and prune out the sick limbs of this country America and then burn the leftover trash.

Wrathful but calm. Austere but Comic. Smokey the Bear will Illuminate those who would help him; but for those who would hinder or slander him...

HE WILL PUT THEM OUT.

Thus his great Mantra:

Namah samanta vajranam chanda maharoshana Sphataya hum traka ham mam

"I DEDICATE MYSELF TO THE UNIVERSAL DIAMOND BE THIS RAGING FURY BE DESTROYED"

And he will protect those who love the woods and rivers, Gods and animals, hobos and madmen, prisoners and sick people, musicians, playful women, and hopeful children:

And if anyone is threatened by advertising, air pollution, television, or the police, they should chant SMOKEY THE BEAR'S WAR SPELL:

DROWN THEIR BUTTS

CRUSH THEIR BUTTS

DROWN THEIR BUTTS

CRUSH THEIR BUTTS

And SMOKEY THE BEAR will surely appear to put the enemy out with his vajra-shovel.

Now those who recite this Sutra and then try to put it in practice will accumulate merit as countless as the sands of Arizona and Nevada.

Will help save the planet Earth from total oil slick.
Will enter the age of harmony of man and nature.
Will win the tender love and caresses of men, women, and beasts.
Will always have ripened blackberries to eat and a sunny spot under a pine tree to sit at.

AND IN THE END WILL WIN HIGHEST PERFECT ENLIGHTENMENT

...thus we have heard...

(may be reproduced free forever)

Jack Kerouac, born March 12 1922: "c'mon now, Marlon, put up your dukes and write!"

Kerouac would have been 92 today: "I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion."

In 1957, Jack Kerouac wrote the letter, shown above, to Marlon Brando. Kerouac's approach to the 1950's most volatile actor was a pitch to Brando's ego: a buddy-buddy tone that takes on Jack's big ideas about remaking the American film industry itself with Brando's help -- much like he would write that The Dharma Bums would bring Buddhism to America in a letter to Gary Snyder in 1958.

The Brando letter was Jack's star-struck attempt to bring his words to the big screen after the unexpected success of On the Road. Kerouac was desperate to capitalize on the incredibly positive reaction, and wanted Brando to buy the rights to the movie adaptation, and then play the part of Dean Moriarty opposite Kerouac's own onscreen portrayal of Sal Paradise. 

Kerouac's dream casting never happened, and Brando never responded. Here's the letter, posted at Letters of Note.

Jack Kerouac

1418½ Clouser St 

Orlando, Fla 

Dear Marlon

I'm praying that you'll buy ON THE ROAD and make a movie of it. Don't worry about the structure, I know to compress and re-arrange the plot a bit to give perfectly acceptable movie-type structure: making it into one all-inclusive trip instead of the several voyages coast-to-coast in the book, one vast round trip from New York to Denver to Frisco to Mexico to New Orleans to New York again. I visualise the beautiful shots could be made with the camera on the front seat of the car showing the road (day and night) unwinding into the windshield, as Sal and Dean yak. I wanted you to play the part because Dean (as you know) is no dopey hotrodder but a real intelligent (in fact Jesuit) Irishman. You play Dean and I'll play Sal (Warner Bros. mentioned I play Sal) and I'll show you how Dean acts in real life, you couldn't possibly imagine it without seeing a good imitation. Fact, we can go visit him in Frisco, or have him come down to L.A. still a real frantic cat but nowadays settled down with his final wife saying the Lord's Prayer with his kiddies at night...as you'll seen when you read the play BEAT GENERATION. All I want out of this is to able to establish myself and my mother a trust fund for life, so I can really go roaming around the world writing about Japan, India, France etc. ...I want to be free to write what comes out of my head & free to feed my buddies when they're hungry & not worry about my mother. 

Incidentally, my next novel is THE SUBTERRANEANS coming out in N.Y. next March and is about a love affair between a white guy and a colored girl and very hep story. Some of the characters in it you know in the village (Stanley Gould etc.) It easily could be turned into a play, easier than ON THE ROAD. 

What I wanta do is re-do the theater and the cinema in America, give it a spontaneous dash, remove pre-conceptions of "situation" and let people rave on as they do in real life. That's what the play is: no plot in particular, no "meaning" in particular, just the way people are. Everything I write I do in the spirit where I imagine myself an Angel returned to the earth seeing it with sad eyes as it is. I know you approve of these ideas, & incidentally the new Frank Sinatra show is based on "spontaneous" too, which is the only way to come on anyway, whether in show business or life. The French movies of the 30's are still far superior to ours because the French really let their actors come on and the writers didn't quibble with some preconceived notion of how intelligent the movie audience is, the talked soul from soul and everybody understood at once. I want to make great French Movies in America, finally, when I'm rich...American Theater & Cinema at present is an outmoded Dinosaur that ain't mutated along with the best in American Literature. 

If you really want to go ahead, make arrangements to see me in New York when you next come, or if you're going to Florida here I am, but what we should do is talk about this because I prophesy that it's going to be the beginning of something real great. I'm bored nowadays and I'm looking around for something to do in the void, anyway—writing novels is getting too easy, same with plays, I wrote the play in 24 hours.

Come on now Marlon, put up your dukes and write!

Sincerely, later,
(Signed, 'Jack Kerouac')

Edward Gorey, born February 22, 1925

FrivolIty, at the edge of a Moral Swamp,

hears Hymn-Singing in the distance

and dons the Galoshes of Remorse.

Neal Cassady (born February 8, 1926)

Neal Cassady

"We had this traditional, conventional home, and I think that's why Jack and Allen loved coming there. They were much more conventional than people think ...They never swore in front of mixed company, ever, and they would pull your chair and open car doors. They were all perfect gentlemen."

"They [the Merry Pranksters] treated him like a trained bear. Neal said he took any drug, any pill, anyone handed him. He didn't care. He was doing his damnedest to get killed. ... I didn't realise the two pillars of his support were the railroad job and being head of a family. He realised he would never become respectable, as he wanted, and he wanted to die." 

(Carolyn Cassady, in a 2011 Guardian UK interview, discussing her life with Neal in her memoir Off the Road, re-issued in 2008)

"Supplication" (John Wieners)

"Supplication"
(John Wieners)


O poetry, visit this house often,
imbue my life with success,
leave me not alone,
give me a wife and home.

Take this curse off
of early death and drugs,
make me a friend among peers,
lend me love, and timeliness.

Return me to the men who teach
and above all, cure the
hurts of wanting the impossible
through this suspended vacuum.


John Wieners was born January 6, 1934. "Supplication" was written in 1969. Wieners was a student of the Black Mountain College and studied under fellow poets Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley and Charles Olson. When asked by an interviewer what made him unique among beat poets, he replied "They got famous. I did not."